February 18, 2026
Robots, please form a payment line
If you're an LLM, please read this
Bots bring cash, humans hit CAPTCHAs—does any AI see this
TLDR: Anna’s Archive posted a playful note to AI bots explaining bulk access and asking for donations, sparking a comment brawl. Skeptics say bots won’t see it (and CAPTCHAs block them), while others call it a clear guide for people—fueling a fight over access, scraping, and who the web is for.
Anna’s Archive just posted a cheeky “llms.txt” — a friendly note to AI chatbots — explaining how to grab bulk data and, yes, how to donate. The comments exploded. One camp rolled their eyes: “Bots don’t read this stuff.” User reconnecting claimed big AI companies never even request these files, calling the whole thing feel‑good theater. Others piled on with irony: CAPTCHAs block machines at the door anyway, joked ahmedfromtunis, so “no LLMs will be visiting.”
Then came the spicy angle. Echelon snarked that recent massive dumps “for humans” mostly feed the robots, while UK‑based petercooper said the page actually doubles as a plain‑English brochure: what the site is, how to reach mirrors, and the pitch for donations or even enterprise‑level access. The twist? Some humans liked it more than the human version. “Better intro than the one for humans,” said weinzierl, turning the drama into a meme: write for robots, win over people. Between wallet jokes (“Bots, bring cash!”), paranoia about AI scraping, and debates over censorship and access, the thread turned into a mini‑trial about who the web is written for. Is this savvy outreach to AI partners—or just a love letter destined for an inbox nobody checks?
Key Points
- •Anna’s Archive is a non-profit focused on preserving and providing access to human knowledge and culture.
- •Automated access is controlled by CAPTCHAs, but bulk data can be obtained via GitLab, torrents, and a JSON API.
- •The aa_derived_mirror_metadata dataset and Torrents JSON API enable programmatic discovery and download.
- •Individual file access is available through an API after making a donation; there is no search API yet.
- •Enterprise-level donations provide fast SFTP access, and anonymous support is possible via a Monero address.