Reddit Sues Perplexity, Scrapers Over Massive Scraping
Reddit Sues Perplexity, Scrapers Over Massive Scraping

Reddit Sues Perplexity, Scrapers Over Massive Scraping

News summary

Reddit filed a federal lawsuit in New York accusing Perplexity AI and three data‑scraping firms—Oxylabs UAB, SerpApi and AWMProxy—of running an “industrial‑scale” scheme to harvest millions of Reddit comments from Google Search results and sell or supply the data to AI companies. The complaint alleges the defendants masked identities and locations to evade Reddit’s anti‑scraping defenses and says that in one July period they accessed nearly three billion search result pages, a practice Reddit labels “data laundering”; it also says a planted test “trap” post appeared in Perplexity results and that Perplexity citations jumped fortyfold. Reddit is seeking a permanent injunction, damages and other relief, noting it already licenses data to companies including Google and OpenAI and previously sued Anthropic. Perplexity denied theft, called the suit a “sad example,” said it is an application‑layer service that does not train foundation models, and accused Reddit of strong‑arm tactics; SerpApi and Oxylabs disputed the allegations while AWMProxy did not respond. Legal observers say the case raises difficult legal and jurisdictional questions about the legality of scraping material visible via Google and could become a pivotal test of how courts balance content‑owner rights, public access and AI companies’ data practices.

Story Coverage
Bias Distribution
67% Left
Information Sources
bfb2a97b-336e-48d9-b69a-147df7862dc2daae85f0-2883-42fc-b085-888140adf30d7d392afd-d4f4-486d-9bb9-fb451611397d0319a078-c5a7-4188-95f2-60cb4be32cc6
+5
Left 67%
Center 22%
R
Coverage Details
Total News Sources
11
Left
6
Center
2
Right
1
Unrated
2
Last Updated
22 min ago
Bias Distribution
67% Left
Related News
Daily Index

Negative

27Serious

Neutral

Optimistic

Positive

Ask VT AI
Story Coverage
Subscribe

Stay in the know

Get the latest news, exclusive insights, and curated content delivered straight to your inbox.

Present

Gift Subscriptions

The perfect gift for understanding
news from all angles.

Related News
Recommended News