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.

  • Saapas@piefed.zip
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    14 hours ago

    Man that was a stupid thing to joke about on a service like Snapchat

    • anon_8675309@lemmy.world
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      12 hours ago

      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.

      • DudleyMason@lemmy.ml
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        10 hours ago

        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.

        • anon_8675309@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          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.

          • DudleyMason@lemmy.ml
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            5 hours ago

            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.

              • DudleyMason@lemmy.ml
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                3 hours ago

                Funny is subjective.

                This was a joke, and so is your bullshit attempt to justify punishing thoughtcrime.

                • anon_8675309@lemmy.world
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                  2 hours ago

                  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”.

                  • wicked@programming.dev
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                    31 minutes ago

                    I have joked to my wife that our kids are lucky they’re so cute so we don’t throw them out of the window during a heavy day of misbehavior.

                    Obviously we wouldn’t ever do that (even if they weren’t so cute), so the joke is cathartic and can be funny in the right context.

                  • howrar@lemmy.ca
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                    1 hour ago

                    An example that comes to mind is mockery. People generally find mockery of behaviour/ideas that they find nonsensical to be funny. So if someone proposes that everything can be solved by a good guy with a gun, you can then mock the idea by proposing it for increasingly ridiculous scenarios.

          • sakuraba@lemmy.ml
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            5 hours ago

            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?

          • isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            7 hours ago

            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.