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.
Christ, are we meant to feel sorry for someone who joked about shooting children now? It’s a big enough problem in the US, normalising it is not the way to go
Were not meant to feel sorry for this person.
This is not an emotion triggering article. Its a n information warning.
The apps some use to send private messages can call the cops on you if an ai gets context wrong. Kinda a big deal.
Yes, we absolutely fucking are.
You know who we’re not supposed to feel any empathy at all for?
People dense enough to not understand the difference between a joke a frustrated person made in the moment to intimate friends vs a scripted joke a comedian tells on stage or on TV, and how different those things are in relation to “normalizing” anything.
Maybe if the US removed their “shooting kids” problem it would be acceptable but it seems like a culpable threat to me, doesn’t matter if she said it was a joke after the fact
Cool, I hope the thought police come for you someday.
Me too 🙂
You must not know children…I get it
Oh, I definitely get it but she had means, motive and opportunity to follow through which I think is a little different. Also unless I missed it the article doesn’t state what she actually said so people pieing it off as a joke are ridiculous.
“Frustrated joke”
I think we can infer enough here bud
Can we? Do we all infer the same thing?
They joked to a few very close friends who knew it was a dark joke after a rough day. It had no business going beyond that.
Oh, they knew it was a dark joke and not a legitimate threat? How? The article doesn’t actually quote her
Because they’re her friends, and know her, just like I know the people around me would never do that, and if MAGA arrested one of them, I’d KNOW the problem was MAGA, not my friend.