Reddit accuses Anthropic of misusing user content
The lawsuit alleges that Anthropic ignored Reddit’s rules and user protections while building its Claude AI models.
Reddit has taken legal action against AI startup Anthropic, alleging that the company scraped its platform without permission and used the data to train and commercialise its Claude AI models.
The lawsuit, filed in San Francisco’s Superior Court, accuses Anthropic of breaching contract terms, unjust enrichment, and interfering with Reddit’s operations.
According to Reddit, Anthropic accessed the platform more than 100,000 times despite publicly claiming to have stopped doing so.
The complaint claims Anthropic ignored Reddit’s technical safeguards, such as robots.txt files, and bypassed the platform’s user agreement to extract large volumes of user-generated content.
Reddit argues that Anthropic’s actions undermine its licensing deals with companies like OpenAI and Google, who have agreed to strict content usage and deletion protocols.
The filing asserts that Anthropic intentionally used personal data from Reddit without ever seeking user consent, calling the company’s conduct deceptive. Despite public statements suggesting respect for privacy and web-scraping limitations, Anthropic is portrayed as having disregarded both.
The lawsuit even cites Anthropic’s own 2021 research that acknowledged Reddit content as useful in training AI models.
Reddit is now seeking damages, repayment of profits, and a court order to stop Anthropic from using its data further. The market responded positively, with Reddit’s shares closing nearly 67% higher at $118.21—indicating investor support for the company’s aggressive stance on data protection.
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