Reddit files a lawsuit against Perplexity and three data scraping companies, accusing them of illegally stealing its data by scraping Google search results
comparing them to “bank robbers” and accusing them of sidestepping its controls to scrape its data and get rich off the AI gravy train. https://www.businessinsider.com/ ... Andrew Curran / @andrewcurran_ : Reddit sued Perplexity today for allegedly engaging in ‘industrial-scale’ scraping of the comments of millions of Reddit users. Under its current training data contracts Google pays reddit $60 million annually to train off it's posts, OpenAI supposedly pays about $70 million. [image] Rat King / @mikeisaac : the other defendants are complicated. Oxylabs is in Lithuiana, AWMProxy in russia, so there's jurisdiction q's. AWMProxy has mega baggage. see this post from @briankrebs on their links to the Glupteba botnet. google sued one of the founders in 2021. https://krebsonsecurity.com/ ... Pedro Dias / @pedrodias : Perplexity keeps pushing the limits and they're about to turn everyone against them... If not already Chirag Kulkarni / @chiraggkulkarni : @glenngabe Here it comes - perplexity and Reddit reach a deal, more Reddit in AI Answers @keytryer : Data that Reddit did not create, of course, and they're not paying a cent to their users for. Adam Eisgrau / @adameisgrau : It's odd for a plaintiff to sue an AI developer *only* for DMCA breaches, but that's what a new SDNY case, @Reddit v @PerplexityAI and several 3d party data scrapers, is about calling @PerplexityAI's scraping of @Google search results “akin to a 'North Korean hacker"'s MO: 🧵⤵️ [image] Nora Abdulkarim / @ana3rabeya : This is so gross. On so many levels. Rat King / @mikeisaac : the startups involved are very interesting. SerpAPI is based in austin and has gone on record with the information in the past essentially saying “actually b/c google is going through an antitrust lawsuit, me scraping them is good for them” (my words) https://www.theinformation.com/ ... Dmitry Shevelenko / @dmitry140 : I'll take my chances Rat King / @mikeisaac : the lawsuit is the news, but what i found fascinating was the unintended side effects of how the age of AI turned a bunch of SEO companies into data resellers to train LLMs [image] Ilan Strauss / @ilanstrauss : Perplexity made a fun “marked bill” / honeypot trap for Perplexity: [image] Brandon Butler / @bc_butler : Props to the Verge for this subhead, which should be affixed to every story about an aggregator suing over AI. None of them is trying to stop AI or protect anyone's data or do any other seemingly noble thing. They just want to be sure they're the ones who get paid! [image] AshutoshShrivastava / @ai_for_success : Redd!t has sued Perplexity in a New York federal court, accusing it of illegally scraping Redd!t data to train its AI search engine. Redd!t claims Perplexity and several partner firms bypassed security measures to access its content without permission. Redd!t says it already [image] Matt Popovich / @mpopv : Another attempt to forcibly imbue the law with the cancerous concept that after freely giving you some publicly available text, a website can stop you from doing something with it that is completely legal Josh Billinson / @jbillinson : imagine going back in time ten years and telling someone there would be massive legal battles over who had the right to train the technology that is upending the entire global economy on le epic bacon website Glenn Gabe / @glenngabe : Big Reddit news. Oh boy -> Reddit Accuses ‘Data Scraper’ Companies of Theft (including Serpapi, Perplexity, and two other companies) “In a lawsuit, Reddit pulled back the curtain on an ecosystem of start-ups that scrape Google's search results and resell the information to [image] Rat King / @mikeisaac : NEWS: Reddit files a lawsuit against Perplexity and three other data scraping companies, accusing them of unlawfully scraping Google for reddit data inside the cottage industry of data scraping and reselling to the biggest AI labs to train their models https://www.nytimes.com/... @zerohedge : *REDDIT FILES COPYRIGHT SUIT AGAINST PEPLEXITY AI AND OTHERS Oh no, chatbots won't have access to the woke encyclopedia galactica Barry Schwartz / @rustybrick : Reddit set a trap for Perplexity and is now suing them... Bluesky: Adam Demasi / @kirb.me : Poor publicly traded corporations having their user-generated content stolen 😢 Forums: r/perplexity_ai : Our Response to Reddit's Lawsuit r/news : Reddit sues Perplexity for scraping data to train AI system r/artificial : Reddit sues Perplexity for scraping data to train AI system r/anime_titties : Reddit sues Perplexity for scraping data to train AI system r/law : Reddit sues Perplexity for scraping data to train AI system r/redditstock : Reddit sues Perplexity for scraping data to train AI system r/technology : Reddit sues Perplexity for scraping data to train AI system See also Mediagazer
Context & Ripple Effects
Reddit has spent the past two years converting access to its discussions into licensed API relationships, including a reported Google data-access agreement and a partnership that brought Reddit content into OpenAI tools. Its earlier case against Anthropic over alleged post-stop access established that Reddit is prepared to enforce those boundaries in court.
The latest case targets an alleged route around those arrangements: obtaining Reddit material through Google results rather than directly from Reddit. That makes search indexing, proxy services and AI-data procurement part of the same access-control dispute.
First-order effects
- Reddit is seeking to stop Perplexity and the named scraping providers from allegedly acquiring and reselling Reddit content through Google search results, while putting their collection practices under legal scrutiny.
- The case reinforces the commercial value of Reddit’s authorized data channels and puts alleged indirect access routes in conflict with its licensing model.
Second-order effects
- AI companies and data vendors that rely on search-result extraction may need to reassess whether indexed content can be collected and reused when the underlying publisher has restricted direct access.
- Google becomes a more consequential intermediary: its indexing can expose publisher material to downstream collection even where the publisher has limited crawlers or built paid data-access channels.
Third-order effects
- If courts and publishers consistently challenge indirect scraping, AI-training data markets could shift further toward auditable licenses and platform APIs rather than brokered web collection.
- The dispute tests the unsettled boundary between publicly surfaced search material and reusable AI input; cross-border proxy providers could make enforcement uneven even if Reddit prevails against some defendants.
The trend: AI publishers are moving from broad crawler restrictions toward enforcing paid, controlled access to content used for model training and AI products.