Day: October 25, 2025

• Reddit has sued Perplexity and data scrapers, accusing them of illegally stealing its data.
• In the lawsuit, Reddit detailed a trap that it says Perplexity fell straight into.
• It was the digital equivalent of a “marked bill,” Reddit said in its lawsuit.

Employees at Reddit knew something was wrong.

Perplexity — the $20 billion artificial intelligence company that competes with OpenAI and Google — had agreed to follow Reddit’s instructions, blocking it from scraping content from the site, according to a lawsuit Reddit filed Wednesday.

But, the lawsuit said, Perplexity continued to cite Reddit in its AI-generated answers — more than ever. The CEO of another AI company even speculated that Perplexity and Reddit secretly struck a content licensing deal.

“The increase was so dramatic that an outside observer hypothesized that the increase was due to Perplexity entering a licensing deal with Reddit and thereby obtaining full access to Reddit’s data,” Reddit’s lawsuit said.

“In truth, there is no license between Perplexity and Reddit,” the lawsuit said, adding that it was the result of “a scheme by Perplexity to obtain Reddit’s data through the circumvention of the technological measures protecting Reddit data.”

So Reddit set a trap. The company created a test post that could only be crawled by Google’s search engine, according to the lawsuit. While Google has a content-licensing deal with Reddit, Perplexity does not.

It was the digital equivalent of a “marked bill,” Reddit’s lawsuit said. According to the lawsuit, the only way Perplexity would be able to get the data in the test post is if it bypassed Reddit’s guardrails using Google’s search engine page results, or SERPS.

If the content from the post was ingested by Perplexity through Google, Reddit would know, according to the lawsuit.

A few hours after it set the trap, Reddit got its answer.

“Within hours, queries to Perplexity’s ‘answer engine’ produced the contents of that test post,” the lawsuit says. “The only way that Perplexity could have obtained that Reddit content and then used it in its ‘answer engine’ is if it and/or its Co-Defendants scraped Google SERPs for that Reddit content and Perplexity then quickly incorporated that data.”

Reddit described the test in its lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Manhattan federal court, against Perplexity and three data-scraping companies: Oxylabs UAB, AWM Proxy, and SerpApi. Reddit alleged the data-scraping companies may have taken its posts without permission and sold them to Perplexity.

Perplexity spokesperson Jesse Dwyer told Business Insider in response to the lawsuit that the company “will not tolerate threats against openness and the public interest.”

Perplexity said in a Reddit post after the lawsuit was filed that it “does not train AI models on content.”

A representative for SerpApi said the company plans to “vigorously defend ourselves in court, while Oxylabs’ chief governance and strategy officer, Denas Grybauskas, said the company was “shocked and disappointed.”

“Oxylabs has always been and will continue to be a pioneer and an industry leader in public data collection, and it will not hesitate to defend itself against these allegations,” Grybauskas said.

AWMProxy, identified in Reddit’s lawsuit as a former Russian botnet, could not be reached for comment.

Reddit’s trap resembles one set up by internet infrastructure company Cloudflare. In an August blog post, the company said it set up web pages with code that instructed Perplexity not to crawl those sites’ content. It found that Perplexity’s crawlers went to those websites anyway.

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince compared Perplexity to “North Korean hackers” for the behavior. Reddit cited the characterization in its lawsuit.

“Some supposedly ‘reputable’ AI companies act more like North Korean hackers,” Matthew Prince wrote on X in August. “Time to name, shame, and hard block them.”

Cloudflare did not respond to a request for comment.

• Whole Foods is opening more small-format Daily Shop stores.
• Business Insider visited the newest location, which opened on Thursday in Arlington, Virginia.
• The store seemed to fix one issue that faced Whole Foods’ last small-store attempt.

Whole Foods is getting in on the small grocery store trend.

On Thursday, the Amazon-owned chain expanded its Whole Foods Market Daily Shop concept with the first location outside New York City. The store is located across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, in Arlington, Virginia — right around the corner from Amazon’s HQ2.

At about 10,000 square feet, this Daily Shop location is about a quarter of the size of a normal Whole Foods store. And, as the name implies, Amazon’s goal isn’t really to offer the store’s patrons everything they might need for their weekly grocery haul.

“If you want a quick lunch, need some ingredients on your way home from work, or you’re stopping in for a meal to go ahead of a flight, we’re ready to serve you,” store team leader Jose Gomez said in a statement about Thursday’s opening.

A Whole Foods spokesperson said that Daily Shop offers a similar product selection to regular Whole Foods stores, “but you won’t see things like a hot bar or full-service meat and seafood cases that you’d see in our traditional, larger store formats.”

“Each category will have a smaller selection, but every category is still represented with various options and price points for the customer,” the spokesperson said.

The Daily Shop format is designed for dense urban areas, Amazon said when it introduced the concept last year. Other smaller-format supermarkets, such as Aldi and Grocery Outlet, have been expanding rapidly in the US.

I headed to the latest Daily Shop location on opening day to see what shopping there is like. Here’s what I found.

This Whole Foods Daily Shop store is located in the Crystal City neighborhood of Arlington, Virginia.

This space housed an Amazon Fresh location before it closed last year. The area around it includes several apartment and condominium complexes, a Metro stop, one of DC’s airports, and one of the major freeways leading into and out of Washington, DC.

Amazon has a big presence in Arlington.

Amazon selected this part of Arlington as the location for its HQ2 in 2018. Since then, the company has opened offices and other facilities in the area, such as this AWS Skills Center.

Daily Shop isn’t Whole Foods’ first attempt at a smaller store.

Whole Foods used to operate small stores under the name Whole Foods 365. This chain focused on the company’s store-brand products and prepared foods. The stores were aimed at younger, price-focused consumers.

The company shuttered the stores in 2019.

Daily Shop seems to avoid the mistakes that 365 made.

While it’s also a small-format grocery store, Daily Shop avoids some of the mistakes that Whole Foods made with its 365 locations, said Phil Lempert, a food industry analyst and editor of the website Supermarket Guru.

The 365 stores carried mainly store-brand products to compete with other grocery chains on prices, Lempert said. “365 was just searching for a way to get the Kroger shopper to come to the store,” he said.

Lempert, who has visited other Daily Shop stores, said that the new stores carry items at multiple price points and are more focused on convenience than price. On my visit, for example, I spotted store-brand items as well as fancy French cheeses.

It helps that Amazon has cut prices on many items at all Whole Foods stores since it acquired the chain in 2017, he said.

“I think the Daily Shop store is back to food and really understanding the consumer,” he said.

A Whole Foods spokesperson said the format is meant to be quick and convenient, bringing stores closer to some customers and extending the company’s reach into surrounding neighborhoods.

“This format is designed to provide customers a quick, convenient shopping experience with easier access to the fresh, high-quality offerings they expect from Whole Foods Market,” the Whole Foods spokesperson said. “These stores bring Whole Foods Market closer to existing customers, while extending the company’s reach to others in surrounding neighborhoods.”

Whole Foods’ focus on ingredients and food quality could be seen around the store.

This sign, a reference to Whole Foods’ quality standards, appeared above the prepared food department.

I found multiple ready-to-eat products, from these tequila lime tortilla chips…

I picked up a bag of these tortilla chips. The tequila lime flavoring was tasty, though they needed more of it.

…to fresh pizza.

I’ve enjoyed Whole Foods’ pizza bar at other locations, so I was happy to see it at Daily Shop.

Daily Shop also has specials to draw in Prime members.

This Friday-only discount on tiramisu and tres leches cake was for members of Amazon Prime.

The store had a decent selection of store- and name-brand products.

While 365 products were throughout the store, I usually saw at least one name-brand equivalent, whether I was looking at breakfast cereal or toothpaste. That supports Lempert’s point that Daily Shop isn’t as focused on cheap groceries as its small-format predecessor was.

Despite the stores’ small size, there was also a decent selection of fresh food.

Bananas are a staple at virtually every grocery store, though if you wanted one or two, you might be better off getting them for free down the street at one of Amazon’s community banana stands.

There was also this return point for Amazon purchases.

Many Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh locations let Amazon customers make returns at their stores, and this Whole Foods Daily Shop location was no exception.

With a few items in my hands, I headed toward the checkouts.

I headed for one of the open self-checkouts, though there was at least one regular checkout staffed by a person if I had wanted that.

The store wasn’t as busy as I worried it might be on opening day, so I didn’t have to wait in line to pay.

Checking out was easy, especially with just a few items.

The checkout area was small, likely a reflection of this format’s focus on quick trips.

My shopping bag reminded me again of Whole Foods’ quality standards.

Whole Foods has a list of about 300 ingredients that it doesn’t allow in any of the food it sells, from foie gras to some food colorings. The shopping bag I got at checkout had dozens of them printed right on it.

Overall, it was a good shopping experience.

Daily Shop seems to live up to Whole Foods’ promises. It’s not meant to replace a larger grocery store, but it’s a reasonable option if you need a few ingredients for a recipe or want something easy to heat up for dinner on the way home from work.

This Daily Shop store has competition on both fronts, though, with several restaurants on the block, and a Costco and a full-size Whole Foods about a 10-minute walk away.

That will be part of the challenge for these urban stores: Cities usually have lots of easy, quick food options, and Daily Shop will need to stand out in a crowd.

Do you have a story idea to share about Whole Foods? Contact this reporter at abitter@businessinsider.com.

• The US job market is in a “Great Freeze” due to a slew of factors.
• Companies don’t want to let talent go, but they’re not adding head count.
• Low layoffs at a time of low hiring can hinder professional advancement.

Bundle up and hunker down. The low-fire, low-hire job market can be summed up in one phrase: the “Great Freeze.”

There are a lot of “lows” in the soft job market, including layoffs and unemployment. That’s the good news and has been the story for over a year. However, the not-so-good news is that job openings and hires have also dropped.

The lack of hiring and the lack of firing could have the same causes. Economists told Business Insider that the US hasn’t had large-scale layoffs because even though the economy is still strong, uncertainties around tariffs and other issues mean that companies are hanging on to the talent they have while being reluctant to hire more.

The low-fire, low-hire labor market has its pros and cons, including hindering potential career growth for workers but offering cost-saving measures for companies.

ZipRecruiter called the recent labor market “The Great Freeze” in a new report on recent turnover and hiring outlook.

“We’re seeing employers and job seekers both trying to wait out any of the uncertainty,” Nicole Bachaud, labor economist at ZipRecruiter, told Business Insider.

The lockup between low layoffs and low hiring might not end any time soon.

“We’re only a few months until the end of the year, and there isn’t an immediately obvious catalyst for why the job market would snap out of the malaise that it’s in,” Daniel Zhao, the chief economist at Glassdoor, said.

Why companies aren’t laying people off or hiring extensively

Jason Draho, the head of asset allocation Americas for UBS Global Wealth Management, said growth and consumer spending remain relatively solid, making it hard to justify large-scale layoffs.

“Earnings are still positive, businesses are still making money, and there’s not really a catalyst for them to reevaluate their head count,” said Stephen Juneau, a senior US economist at Bank of America.

Juneau said that uncertainty, artificial intelligence, pockets of economic weakness — such as in construction activity — and supply issues are affecting companies investing in new talent.

There are likely fewer workers entering the US these days, slowing labor force growth. “This negative labor supply shock obviously contributes to a slowdown in hiring,” Juneau said.

Supply issues combined with low hiring have also affected unemployment, which has risen but remains relatively low, Draho said.

Zhao said that employers are labor hoarding, or holding on to talent as a precaution, because they don’t want to relive previous staffing troubles. “After the experience during the Great Resignation and the labor shortages era, many businesses are hesitant to return to a world where they are desperate for workers and can’t find them,” he said.

Draho said that if next year has better growth, stimulus measures, and tariff clarity, then companies won’t want to be making mass layoffs now and then have to scramble for employees. “They don’t want to be caught short with a lack of labor,” he said.

ZipRecruiter’s September survey of talent acquisition professionals showed 63% of businesses intend to hire moderately or significantly more in the next year, down from 76% last year. “However, the current macroeconomic conditions are continuing to add delays and additional layers that are going to continue to keep hiring and movement in general at this slower pace for the next couple of months,” Bachaud said.

But labor hoarding could crumble if the economy worsens. “If employers have some cash or some buffer to work with, they can afford to keep some workers on staff, even if it isn’t profitable right now,” Zhao said. “I don’t expect this labor hoarding story to be able to protect against a full business cycle and recession where businesses are going to be forced to lay off workers.”

What today’s job market means for workers, job seekers, and employers

Zhao said labor hoarding can be good for workers because of job security, and unemployed people have less competition than if there were mass layoffs. However, many people are still actively seeking employment in the low-hiring, low-layoff environment. So, it can be tough to land a job. There were 7.4 million people unemployed in August, but only 7.2 million job openings were available; the number of job openings per unemployed person has cooled way down since the tight labor market recovery after the pandemic recession.

“Many workers have to settle for jobs that are not a good fit for them, whether they don’t pay commensurate with their experience or it’s not in a field or industry that they’re skills would best match,” Zhao said.

Lack of turnover can hinder professional development. Zhao said that low hiring affects jobholders who may want to secure a new job that offers better career growth opportunities or who wish to advance or negotiate a raise internally. The Atlanta Fed’s Wage Growth Tracker showed the 12-month moving averages of median wage growth were similar for job switchers and job stayers as of August.

“Employers who are focusing too much on stability and keeping everything as it is, keeping the status quo, are going to risk losing out to innovation and growth that’s not going to be happening if there’s no movement internally in their company,” Bachaud said. “Employees are going to be stuck in their role without growing and adding new skills and moving along their career paths.”

In the cool job market with workers staying put, Bachaud suggested people upskill within their roles so they can still grow and add to their résumé when they look for a new position.

Are you job searching, staying put in your job, or a hiring manager who has seen the workplace change? Reach out to this reporter to share at mhoff@businessinsider.com.