Ivan Mehta, reporting for TechCrunch:

“AI companies are ruthlessly scraping public websites, given their endless need for training data, which is degrading site performance across the board,” Martin said. We’ve had multiple instances in the last several months where performance has been diminished and, in some cases, impaired. Beyond scraping the public sites, they’re also trying to use our API to get access to our data, ignoring API terms.”

Strava adding an $11.99 monthly fee for API access looks small because the number is small. That is the trick. The real product here is not the fee; it is a locked door with a price tag on it.

For years, fitness platforms got to posture as community infrastructure. Routes, clubs, segments, public profiles — the webby stuff that makes the app feel bigger than a training log. Then the crawlers arrived, and suddenly “public” started looking less like openness and more like an unpaid data export.

The IPO timing makes this even cleaner. Investors do not want a charming commons. They want controlled assets, enforceable terms, and a story about discipline. “We stopped the scrapers” is a better roadshow slide than “we trust the ecosystem.”

Developers will get the memo. AI companies already got theirs and ignored it.