Lawsuit targets AI firm and three vendors for unlicensed data scraping, seeking damages and a ban to protect Reddit’s $10 billion content ecosystem.
Reddit filed a federal lawsuit on October 22, 2025, targeting Perplexity AI and data-scraping firms SerpApi, Oxylabs, and AWMProxy for allegedly stealing user-generated content without licensing, as reported by Reuters.
Filed in Manhattan’s U.S. District Court, the suit accuses the defendants of bypassing Reddit’s protections to harvest posts via Google search results, thereby violating the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and seeking financial damages, as well as a permanent injunction.
The complaint alleges “industrial-scale” scraping by SerpApi, Lithuania-based Oxylabs, and Russia-linked AWMProxy, which sell Reddit data to AI developers like Perplexity.
A sting operation—utilizing a test post only visible through Google—revealed that Perplexity’s chatbot had used scraped Reddit content hours later, despite a May 2024 cease-and-desist order, according to The Verge.
Reddit, which monetizes its $10 billion data pool for AI training through deals with Google and OpenAI, claims this undermines its business model.
Perplexity denied direct scraping, vowing to “fight for users’ rights to access public knowledge,” while Oxylabs called the suit “shocking,” per Bloomberg.
Reddit’s aggressive stance, including its Anthropic lawsuit and Really Simple Licensing adoption, reflects efforts to control its data amid rising AI demand. X posts show user support for protecting community content, though some debate “public” data rights.
Users can monitor the case via PACER or Reddit’s investor page. This suit could set precedents for AI data ethics, echoing NYT’s OpenAI case. As Reddit defends its 2.5 billion monthly users’ contributions, the outcome may reshape how AI firms source training data.
