Reddit Accuses 'Data Scraper' Companies of Theft · Legal Launchpad for AIpreneurs

Reddit Accuses 'Data Scraper' Companies of Theft

On October 22, 2025, Reddit filed a lawsuit against the AI startup Perplexity, accusing it and several data-scraping companies of stealing its data. The complaint, filed in a New York court, alleges that the companies created a scheme to bypass Reddit's restrictions and scrape its data from Google's search results for use in training AI models.

This lawsuit is part of a growing trend of copyright and scraping litigation as AI companies train their large language models on internet data.

For AI entrepreneurs this lawsuit is a wake-up call that the "move fast and break things" approach to data scraping is a dead-end strategy with catastrophic financial and legal risks. ***Building automation tools on a foundation of unlawfully scraped data—whether the data is public or behind a paywall—exposes your business to significant liability for copyright infringement and breach of contract.***

Your long-term success depends on building a robust, defensible data strategy that prioritizes licensed, consented, and transparently sourced data, or you risk your entire operation being shut down by a lawsuit.

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