Sixty minutes. That’s how long it took for a private Snapchat message to travel from Kristen Volpe’s phone to the FBI to the deputies standing in her elementary school hallway. On January 29, 2025, the 22-year-old student teacher at John L. Hensey Elementary in Washington, Illinois, vented to her boyfriend and two roommates — three people total — after a student closed her laptop mid-class and wiped her lesson plan. She referenced shooting the student or the school. She meant it as a frustrated joke. Snapchat’s algorithm didn’t get the humor.
No student reported her. No parent. No coworker. The flag was entirely automated. Snapchat’s policy permits voluntary emergency disclosures to law enforcement — no warrant required — when the platform determines imminent harm exists. The algorithm makes that initial call. Think of it like your Ring doorbell deciding to call 911 on its own, except the doorbell is reading your text messages.
Questions for the ridiculous number of people on here who are perfectly willing to give up their right to privacy because you believe it makes schools and other places safer:
Have you read the 50+ page user agreement for your cell phone company? How about the user agreements of every app that has access to your cell phone, your PC mic or apps that have access to your files? Late model cars have microphones too, as do TV remotes. Microsoft has access to everything on your Windows PC. I’d give 100 to 1 odds that 99% of you haven’t read any of those user agreements OR the UA for private chat apps you are using. Likewise are you sure any cloud storage you’re using isn’t scanning your documents for forbidden phrases?
Since you haven’t read every word of each and every user agreement and think it keeps schools safe, you should be just fine with the fact that EVERYTHING you say or write may be available to law enforcement, even if you’re talking to yourself while sitting on the toilet in your home. If you mutter that you’d like to kill someone or burn something misheard as a school building to the ground you are just fine with AI flagging it and the police knocking on your door in an hour, right? You’ll also be just fine with losing your career and your job never being able to find another one, right? Right? After all other people never know WTF someone dangerous and violent is going to do.
The number of people on here who are perfectly willing to give up all their rights and have their private communications monitored for something that is nothing more than security theater is unbelievable.
know what platform doesn’t have this problem? simplex.
that’s why neonazis are using it and why you should too.
Why did you choose such a clickbatey title?
Is it legal for a service to be called private when it is programmatically shared with law enforcement?
Welcome to post Constitution USA.
And this is why I’ve moved away from snap, and most other platforms, I’m back to texting and using carrier pigeons.
Who the fuck still uses Snapchat?
Ditch that shit.
Hate to be that guy, but this is a skill issue.
Sending something that could be misinterpreted by an algorithm or law enforcement over unencrypted channels like this is just a terrible idea.
I fully agree with how all of this is authoritarian bullshit but I can’t escape that nagging feeling that this too is about the US, the only country in the world where these shootings are daily occurrences; I get that people get ichy about even jokes like these
Marvel at how AI stopped this non-existent threat, while also giving advice on the best way to kill yourself, or get the highest kill score in a mass shooting, or hack into other corporations.
Sure, this tech isn’t ever going to start directly killing people it has determined are a problem, flipping off life support machines, crashing autonomous vehicles, etc.
It’s HEARTENING to Know these Platforms have the ABILITY to STOP atrocities and Almost Always choose NOT too! <3
Yeah, I can’t feel bad for her. If you’re a teacher in the USA, you should NEVER be “joking” about shooting your students!
There’s a reason why Donald and his friends in Washington have all of their discussions on Signal.
Also, if you’re not already, just assume every app and device are spying on you.
Now that you know everything on Snapchat is going through active automated filtering, consider what Snapchat has chosen NOT to flag and is allowing to flow freely, like sex trafficking and the sale of minors.
As unfair and life-changing as this event has been for this young teacher, I think the actual story of what Snapchat (and every other digital communication method) is reading/tracking yet allowing is a much, much bigger story. And dirtier. With billionaires and pedophiles and all manner of nasty allowables we do not yet know.
This will ve the biggest shock to society when people discover what has been known. The only reason people are not blackmailed into compliance and slavery yet is because they have not destabilized the gov enough to get away with it.
Think if they had to explain how they know the color of your shit that day, but they can’t explain where all the cocaine came from or why sex trafficking rings still exist? How did they know everything else but not how that senator bought the crack he was caught smoking?
We can’t be more than a few years away if we continue along this path.
I suspect a lot of the influence of Israel and the US on European politicians who again and again act against the European Public Opinon and in favor of Israel and the US, is the ton of blackmail material those two states have gathered on politicians the world over in the modern era of digital communications mainly via American systems, using portable networked pocket computers running OSes from American companies and which have everything needed to be a fully-features surveillance device, including a camera.
Every single vaguelly criminal or even just shameful action of any European politician with a chance of reaching a position of power, done via or around a smartphone or computer running an American OS and/or using American chat software, is almost certainly stored in a database somewhere.
Certainly that would explain A LOT of what’s going on in European Politics, especially when it comes to Israel turning full-on NAZI whilst European governments mainly just make believe nothing is happening or propose purely symbolic performative measures with zero effectiveness in stopping the Genocide.
Man that was a stupid thing to joke about on a service like Snapchat
That’s a stupid thing to say about a child in any context on any platform. Even in jest, keep that shit tucked away in your head.
Yeah can’t wait until you say something in frustration and get hauled away for it. People supporting this bullshit are the only people who deserve to have it happen to them, and as long as we’re going down the fascism hellslide anyway I’m gonna take some satisfaction in seeing the people who supported the Leopards come to the horrific realization about exactly whose faces were on the menu.
I’m in support of making sure my kids are safe. When someone says something like this, even in frustration, I don’t know if they intend to act on it. I’d rather everyone be safe.
It was absolutely stupid of this teacher to fuck up like this.
But I’d rather the police show up and check on her than have yet another school of bloodied, dead kids.
But you do you.
I’d rather everyone be safe.
Everyone except anyone who’s made a joke you personally find distasteful, apparently.
When the thought police come for you, I hope no one lifts a finger.
Jokes are funny.
This, wasn’t a joke. Maybe it was frustration. But it wasn’t a joke.
Funny is subjective.
This was a joke, and so is your bullshit attempt to justify punishing thoughtcrime.
Only thing less “funny” than this “joke” is the fact that people like you think it’s okay.
There is NO context in which this would be “funny”.
Safe from what? A joke?
But I’d rather the police show up and check on her than have yet another school of bloodied, dead kids.
Has there been any case like this? Or are you just pulling something out of nothing?
So there has to be a case like this for you to think hmmm maybe we should be cautious?
Wow.
well you better watch out for the boogieman
Yawn
Oh quit with the haughty hypocritical bullshit. There is no way you have gone your entire life without venting or joking about committing an act of violence against someone or some evil company. Maybe we shouldn’t crucify people for ordinary human behavior. Morbid humor is just part of human communication. If you actually have never done so, I would think there’s something deeply psychologically wrong with you. Like you’re obsessed with appearances and carefully choose every single word to control your public image to the most minute degree.
It’s okay, you do t have to agree with me.
