🪤 Reddit Sues Perplexity

Reddit Set a Trap. Perplexity Walked Right Into It.

Reddit published a test post in September. Only Google's crawler could see it. Perplexity surfaced it within four hours.

That's not scraping—that's getting caught.

On Wednesday, Reddit sued four companies for stealing its data. SerpApi, Oxylabs, AWMProxy, and Perplexity. They built what Reddit calls a "data laundering" operation—scraping Google search results to extract Reddit content, then selling it to AI companies.

Reddit charges for data. It signed licensing deals with Google and OpenAI. Millions of dollars. But not everyone wanted to pay.

Most coverage missed the context: Reddit went public in March 2024. Its stock price lives or dies on two things—user growth and monetizing its data. User growth is fine (110 million daily users, up 21%). Data monetization is the battlefield. When investors see companies stealing data Reddit's trying to sell, the stock drops. Hence the lawsuit.

The suit exposed an entire cottage industry scraping Google to access Reddit without permission. SerpApi originally helped businesses rank in search. ChatGPT launched. Suddenly that scraped Google data became AI training material. Overnight pivot.

Three companies sell scraped data to AI labs. The fourth, Perplexity, bought data from these scrapers after promising to stop scraping Reddit directly.

The uncomfortable part? Citations to Reddit in Perplexity jumped "fortyfold" after they agreed to stop scraping.

Buying scraped data isn't scraping. Technically.

Reddit's trap was elegant. Create content only Google can crawl. If Perplexity surfaces it? They're using Google as a backdoor. Perplexity surfaced the test post within hours.

"Perplexity's business model is effectively to take Reddit's content from Google search results, feed it into an A.I. model and call it a new product," the lawsuit states.

Look at Stack Overflow. They have the same problem. Millions of developer Q&As indexed by Google. AI companies scraping those results to train coding models. Stack Overflow tried licensing deals. Some companies paid. Others just scraped Google instead. Stack Overflow doesn't have Reddit's market cap to fund litigation. So the scraping continues.

Reddit spent tens of millions on anti-scraping systems. Doesn't matter. This isn't a technology problem—it's economic incentives. As long as scrapers can sell data cheaper than licensing, the ecosystem persists.

Here's what nobody's saying: Reddit locked down direct scraping. Companies found a workaround. Reddit can sue scrapers in Texas, Lithuania, and Russia. Good luck with that.

The lawsuit reveals how value actually flows. Reddit creates conversations. Google indexes them. Scrapers extract them. AI companies train on them. Everyone profits except Reddit.

My bet? This lawsuit is about precedent, not stopping scraping. Reddit went public. Investors need to see them protecting their asset. Winning in court matters less than establishing "data laundering" as a recognized violation.

Whether Stack Overflow and Quora copy this playbook depends on cash. The trap works. The litigation requires money they don't have.

Though scrapers spent years building workarounds to robots.txt. They're testing new approaches right now. Reddit might be fighting an unwinnable war.

But the trap was clever.

🔍 This Week in 📰 Reddit

🤖 Automate Reddit Research in 15 Minutes

Developer Adam Walker shared a workflow using Claude Code to build a Reddit research app with zero coding. The system connects to Reddit's API, searches subreddits for specific topics, and outputs structured JSON files with exact user quotes and discussion threads. Positions Reddit as intelligence layer for product validation—listening at scale remains more valuable than posting at scale.

LinkedIn - Adam Walker

📊 Reddit Hits Halloween Engagement Peak

Platform reports 2 in 3 Redditors celebrate Halloween, conversation spikes 5x in the two weeks before October 31. Reddit users 40% more likely to host parties, 29% more likely to spend on seasonal food and drinks. If you're planning Halloween campaigns and you're not already in relevant communities? You're late. Seasonal spikes reward brands that were there year-round, not ones showing up for the spike.

Social Media Today

🎯 Why Community Authority Compounds

SearchEngineJournal analysis shows "Discussions & Forums" SERP feature appearing in 70-75% of product review searches. Reddit's own research indicates 71% of people discovering brands offline go to Reddit for validation, and 74% say Reddit speeds up purchase decisions. Authority in forums now directly impacts conversion rates across all channels—community presence isn't isolated from broader funnel performance.

SearchEngineJournal

📈 Reddit Becomes Second Most-Cited Platform

Marketing platform Profound analyzed 1 billion citations across 10 AI engines between September 14 and October 14. Reddit ranked second behind YouTube, accounting for 6.3% of Perplexity citations, 2.3% of Google AI Overviews, and 1.2% of ChatGPT responses. Despite citation volatility, Reddit maintains position as primary non-video training source—platforms betting on text-based AI need Reddit data whether they're licensing it or not.

Axios

Your CMO Is Assigning Reddit to the Wrong Team

Profound tracked 1 billion AI citations in 30 days. Reddit ranked second behind YouTube. 6.3% of Perplexity, 2.3% of Google AI Overviews, 1.2% of ChatGPT.

Marketing teams see this: "We need Reddit presence for AI citations."

Wrong game.

Axios named the success stories: Sonos, GM, Spotify, Fidelity, Wayfair. None are chasing AI citations. They're there because their teams actually use Reddit. The citations? Exhaust, not strategy.

Here's what I'm seeing:

Teams chasing citations: Set up accounts because Profound data looked good. Assign to marketing. Measure "AI mentions" as KPI. Optimize posts for scraping.

Teams building authority: Were on Reddit before anyone tracked citations. Customer success answering questions in relevant subreddits. Engineers hosting AMAs because they wanted to, not because someone told them to.

First group flames out in 8 months when they can't justify budget. Second group doesn't even know citation tracking exists.

And this is the part that frustrates me—

Steve Huffman: "Today's Reddit conversations are tomorrow's search results" and "No matter how good AI gets, people will always want to hear from other people."

Brands heard that and thought "optimize for search results." Wrong takeaway. The point is people trust people. If you're not a person genuinely participating, you're the noise they're filtering out.

The question isn't whether marketers will resist treating this like paid social. They won't. Reddit's design punishes performance marketing thinking. But that's never stopped anyone before.

🎮 Reddit Software & Tools

The Reddit ecosystem for tools, software, and related apps is particularly underdeveloped for the #3 platform in the world.

I’m tracking the new tools that pop on my radar here:

• GummySearch (my favoriate tool right now): The first dedicated Reddit intel suite I’ve seen, great for monitoring communities, tracking change detection (fast-growing communities at different tiers), tracking keywords, and doing more advanced keyword research.

• NotifyGPT: Not specifically a Reddit tool, but Reddit is one of it’s strongest use cases for social listening.

• KWatch.io: An all-source UGC social listening and monitoring platform, includes Reddit.

• RedditInsights.ai: Found this one, a good way to group and approximate topic interest from Reddit. A super scraper. '

• Pulse: This ones new this week and I haven’t tested it too much, but could be an interesting. More positioned to brands marketing on Reddit (connects via Reddit API).

• Subreddit Traffic Tracker: This is an interesting new find that helps optimize post and engagement timing based on when specific communities are most active on Reddit.

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Need help engaging as a brand on Reddit?

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That’s it for this week!