SA news sites block AI scrapers at half the rate of Global North publishers — and smaller outlets are barely protected at all

South Africa's news sector blocks AI crawlers at more than four times the rate of Brazil — but at barely half the rate recorded among top-tier Global North publishers by the Reuters Institute in 2023. Yet the aggregate 30.4% figure conceals a deeper structural inequality: the Protocol Gap report finds that the ability to block AI scrapers belongs overwhelmingly to large, well-resourced publishers, while smaller, community, vernacular and independent outlets — which make up the majority of the 263 sites examined — remain almost entirely exposed. The rate has shifted by just 0.7 percentage points in six months, meaning for most SA news publishers, meaningful protection against AI content extraction is, in practice, still out of reach.