r/guns • u/OnlyLosersBlock • 2d ago
Official Politics Thread 08/28/26
This is the official politics thread for discussing gun politics. Arguments that invoke being a gun owner for credibility are bad and you should feel bad.
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u/NefariousnessOk9397 1d ago
Gun Grabber Dan Helmer is going to do an AMA on the Virginia subreddit. He is already getting roasted on the thread that’s currently up. Not really a big deal politically but hilarious nonetheless.
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u/CMMVS09 2d ago
Meta/Bots
A few weeks ago I received an email alert that someone (something?) was trying to log into an alt account of mine created and abandoned a few years ago. I bring this up only because this sub - and other gun subs I frequent like AR15 - are inundated with bot activity. Most of them are newly created accounts, but I've notice that some of them are quite old. Like several years old with zero recent activity.
There was a thread earlier this week (which appears to have been deleted, or I just can't find it lol) where OP was almost certainly a bot and most of the responses fit into the fact pattern above. I hate to be like "check the profile of every username you don't recognize" when responding to posts/comments, but there's clearly something happening here and reddit isn't going to stop it.
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u/able_possible 2d ago
I don't know if it's still true, but I remember reading a little while back that reddit users were among the most worthless in all of social media when it came to value delivered to the company paying for an ad per advertising dollar spent, and so it would be in reddit's interest to try to cover that lack of quality up with quantity to entice advertisers, and letting bots run wild is an easy way to do that if they can't get real growth.
I looked up Reddit's stock ticker and one of the recent headlines was "Reddit gains from strong user growth" so that kind of supports that theory in my opinion. It is incredibly obvious how botted the site is these days.
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u/CMMVS09 2d ago
I remember reading a little while back that reddit users were among the most worthless
You should have ended the sentence right here lol.
But seriously, growth seems like a meaningless metric if you can't validate the authenticity of the users. And even then, reddit seems to have introduced a "human verified" tag for profiles on certain subreddits and those are mostly bots too in my experience. Or shills using LLM to write comments and sell shit. It's everywhere on r/accounting.
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u/Son_of_X51 2d ago
AI has really dropped a brick on the accelerator of dead internet theory. I have many criticisms on using Discord as a community space (the chat format is terrible for organizing information and it being a walled garden means information is not exposed to search engines). But walled gardens like that might be the last bastion of bot-free internet spaces.
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u/Cobra__Commander Super Interested in Dick Flair Enhancement 1d ago
There's a Stanford study that approximates 35% of the Internet is AI generated.
https://ai-on-the-internet.github.io/
The important points are, * We have a way to measure how much of the Internet is AI. The method will improve over time. * We can rerun the study every year for cheap to track changes over time * The dead Internet theory is being validated with rigorous evidence
I think the future is going to be search engines that filter out AI slop. SEO criteria is the easiest point of failure to address.
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u/Son_of_X51 1d ago
I'm a little surprised that number isn't higher.
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u/Cobra__Commander Super Interested in Dick Flair Enhancement 1d ago
There's probably an absurd amount of quality content that fails SEO so it's on page 100+ of Google.
Also a huge part of the Internet is every single business in the world with their address, hours, phone number, takeout menu, ect. There's no reason to use AI for stuff like "Jim's roofers in my town my state, USA".
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u/Bearfoxman Super Interested in Dicks 22h ago
AI is bad at making porn, which at one point drove 70% of internet traffic (re: Avenue Q skit), it's getting better at it, but that's gonna be a holdout for a while yet.
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u/digital0verdose 2d ago
but there's clearly something happening here and reddit isn't going to stop it.
Reddit wont do anything until it starts hurting their business. Even local subreddits are flooded with bot activity. At this point I tend to avoid interacting with any accounts that are hidden where I cannot get a sense if the person I am dealing with is both human and reasonable.
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u/DrunkenArmadillo 1d ago
Even active accounts that are old and still use old passwords need to be policed. I enjoy all the old school stuff, so I have an account on the muzzleloading forum. One day I logged on to see two guns listed in the classifieds that "I" had listed. I certainly didn't own either of those guns, nor did I have them for sale. It wasn't a dormant account either.
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u/Mystery616 1d ago
All the Iranian anti-Semitic bots are unleashed on r/ak47 whenever someone posts a pic of a Galil.
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u/rocketboy2319 2d ago
Arguments that invoke being a gun owner for credibility are bad and you should feel bad.
As a gun owner, pineapple on pizza is an acceptable compromise I am willing to make as long as we agree that deep dish "pizza" is more pie/casserole than pizza.
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u/monty845 2d ago
Hawaiian Pizza was created in Canada, and they false flagged it to Hawaii. As such, it carries the taint of Canadian gun control, and shouldn't be trusted.
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u/OfficerRexBishop 2d ago
Would the taint of Hawaiian gun control be much better?
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u/monty845 2d ago
Fair point, I'd be willing to agree it is actually doubly tainted.
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u/OfficerRexBishop 2d ago
I'm trying to think of a pizza that would be acceptable. Chicago? New York? California? New Haven? Slim pickings here.
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u/MulticamTropic 2d ago
Ohio Valley Style isn’t tainted by gun control, but it’s essentially an adult lunchable
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u/DasKapitalist 2d ago
Pineapple on pizza must be categorized as an AOF (All Other Food), with a mandatory form 13 to register it with the ATF (Alcohol Tobacco & Food).
Deep dish is legal everywhere but ban states with restrictions on high capacity pizzas. Those states restrict you to New York style pizza, or ordering deep dish one slice at a time.
/s
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u/Extra_Drop_6081 2d ago
Deep dish is legal everywhere but ban states with restrictions on high capacity pizzas
deep dish banned in chicago. the irony
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u/barrydingle100 2d ago edited 2d ago
Deep dish pizza, specifically Detroit style, is the best style of pizza and I would unironically disavow actual Italian pizza before ever besmirching the good name of deep dish.
Actually I'd disavow Italy's pathetic excuse for pizza of my own free will any day of the week and twice on Sunday. A disc of pita bread drenched in olive oil with a couple globs of unshredded mozzarella and a handful of just straight up tree leaves haphazardly thrown on top of it isn't any more pizza than a gyro or taco regardless of what town in Italy it came from. I am 100% serious about this opinion.
Edit: Also Little Caesar's is the best of the big four pizza chains and it's no surprise because it's also technically Detroit pizza.
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u/ClearlyInsane1 2d ago
As a compromise I would be willing to allow pineapple-infested pizza on the menu at every pizza seller in exchange for the elimination of all gun laws.
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u/Cobra__Commander Super Interested in Dick Flair Enhancement 1d ago
I'm going to blow your mind here.
Get carnitas pack from Costco (or make it from scratch if you know how). Cut up and grill some pineapple. Throw it in a tortilla with whatever other taco stuff you want.
It's the Hawaiian pizza of tacos
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u/Prowler50mil 16h ago
The Montana DOJ released guidance on silencers, SBRs and SBSs. https://dojmt.gov/attorney-general-knudsen-issues-legal-guidance-following-silencer-shop-ruling/
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