Perplexity literally lists Reddit as a source. Does that make being active on Reddit an SEO play now?

So, a couple of weeks back, a client of ours showed up in an AI answer, and the source it cited was a Reddit thread, not their site. Posted about it at the time and figured it might just be a fluke, so I actually went and checked properly, ran a pile of "best X in Y" queries through ChatGPT and perplexity.

And yeah, perplexity straight up lists "reddit community discussions" as one of its main sources. It even tied specific business recommendations to individual Reddit users (like "recommended by a Reddit user for competitive pricing"). So it's not a one-off, it's a documented part of how the thing works. chatgpt leaned more on directories and roundup blogs fwiw, but perplexity clearly weights reddit.

Which leads me to the part. If the AI is pulling recommendations from Reddit threads, then a brand getting mentioned naturally in the right subreddits is kind of an SEO asset now? not in the old backlink sense. More like the model treats Reddit as proof because it's real people talking instead of polished marketing copy.

And that feels both obvious and slightly cursed lol. Because the second marketers fully clock this, they're gonna start astroturfing subs to get clients mentioned, and then the whole reason the AI trusts Reddit (actual humans) quietly breaks. We'll have ruined another good thing.

I honestly don't know where I land on it. Part of me thinks the only real move is to just be genuinely useful in the communities your customers actually hang out in and let mentions happen on their own. The other part of me thinks that doesn't scale, and the spam wave is coming no matter what.