Why would they be obligated to when users opt-in to giving up rights? The ToS that appears when creating an account dictates Reddit's ownership of every comment posted.
I don't think LLM companies need permission to scrape Reddit. It's ironic because Reddit is basically saying "you can't profit off user content for free, that's what we're doing!"
Is it the case that companies are allowed to scrape data for profit under US law? I was aware of the LinkedIn ruling setting a precedent for scraping public facing data, however, I wasn't sure if it applied within any scopes.
(not a lawyer, not legal advice) The Supreme Court determined that the CFAA doesn't apply in a particular way to scraping public data. You're still probably in hot water if you violate copyright or other laws, and you're still probably in hot water (as in the LinkedIn case) if you also scrape non-public data.
Except that’s not what’s going on because they pay millions or more in busting fees and staff ?
they don't have to (although Twitter for example hinted at such an arrangement) because all those people came voluntarily and signed a tos, and reddit didn't just steal that data from them.