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.
So the lesson to the rest of us is DO NOT USE SNAPCHAT especially for private messaging.
I use Signal, was pressed to do so by privacy-minded friends and have pressed other friends to adopt the client.
So long as you don’t accidentally include Jeffrey Goldberg in your chat, you’re okay.
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.
This is so disturbingly common. Remember the dad that sent a picture to his son’s pediatrician?
This bullshit is getting out of hand.
I know it’s not nearly the same level, but over on reddit I participated in a thread. Nevermind full context, someone said something about “The first half of life [something]”, someone replied “and the second half of life [something]” and I jokingly said “And the third half of life, you’re dead.”
Couple replied to that - it was minorly amusing in context - and one of them said “Now I’m sad”. So I jokingly said “Well, good news is you won’t be sad when you’re dead”.
Within a few minutes, I got a warning from reddit and the comment removed.
So I appealed the warning (because if AI removes another comment, you get a 3 day suspension, then 7 day, then 30 day, then permanent), but also rephrased the commeny and basically make the joke while not even saying “dead”, but I also rolled my eyes at the reddit AI.
I almost immediately got a permanent ban.
THEN THE STUPIDEST BIT: They overturned the warning BUT KEPT THE PERMANENT BAN.
Fucking idiots.
Dont’ judge me for still spending some time on reddit, I mod a couple of places. THAT account is still going, but I also don’t use that account except to mod because of this bullshit with reddit that’s been getting worse.
Go to the circus, expect to see clowns.
there seems to be a disconnect between what the admin does, unbanning and the autobanning from reddits AI moderation, if admins unban an account but the Ai still catches you, because it detected a pattern (which they build a profile of potential spammers)which got you banned in the first place and bans you any ways, they dont want the filter clean.
I got a warning for saying I wanted to shoot the noisy mic children (in Reddead Redemption within the Reddead Redemption subreddit). I guess next time I say I want to troll badly behaved children in a videogame I’m going to have police called on me now?
I got the warning overturned but AI moderation is fucking ridiculous.
The way things are going, the next time you go on rampage through town while playing Skyrim or Fallout, the actual cops will show up at your door and shoot at you like the guards in the game.
And then people will say that EU is an oppressive state because it has a draft of a law that doesn’t even come close to what US is doing already.
also us is quite selective when they will enforce which laws.
Problem is that Chat Control will undermine encryption. Snapchat worked as advertised.
Chat Control was never about scanning text messages, it’s about scanning media to prevent propagation of CSAM. E2EE is very specifically protected and all scanning has to be done client side. Chat Control will “undermine encryption” only in the sense that messenger apps could check shared media files. If it’s even passed it could in theory lead to similar situation (false positives on some media) but right now nothing like this is happening and it’s not clear if it will ever happen while in US police is already being sent to people over texts to friends. So while I agree that we should be vigilant and Chat Control in its current form is not a move in the right direction screaming how EU is oppressing everyone is an exaggeration.
Chat Control 1.0 is in effect and allows providers to scan message content. That can be done with unencrypted messages (exactly like what snapchat did in the article) on the provider’s servers or client side for encrypted messages. This effectively undermines encrytion regarding that provider and the government.
Chat Control 2.0 is where some in the EU propose to make the client side scanning mandatory for CSAM. Which is probably where the accusations of an oppressive EU are coming from. For now this is not im effect and there continues to be heavy pushback.
For now, it sounds like the US and the EU are effectively the same on this matter. Unencrypted messages can be scanned on device or on route, encrypted messages can be scanned client side. Nothing is mandatory for now but there is a clear push to change that. With the current model and plenty of encrypted alternatives available to text your friends without a police follow-up, it’s on the user to educate themselves and chose wiser
For now, it sounds like the US and the EU are effectively the same on this matter.
One is as of now sending police to interrogate people over text messages and the other is not even scanning anything locally (Chat Control 1.0 allows scanning but no one is actually doing this). “Effectively the same…” People have lost all sense of proportion on this. One has currently implemented automated system to alarm police about possible school shootings based on a single text message where police is actually responding in minutes (not to mention full monitoring of kids school computers and actual police officers assaulting children in schools!) and the other doesn’t even consider school shooting a meaningful risk and does not surveils kids or teachers in any way. Yes, you’re right. It’s pretty much the same.
I will just give up now. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to talk with deranged people.
When I say “the US and the EU are effectively the same on this matter” then I talk about the legal framework that is allowing this to happen. Snapchat can scan in the EU as they did in the US.
You say this is not happening, and honestly I don’t know if anyone is currently scanning under Chat Control 1 or not. It sounds to me though they could if they wanted to. Has nothing of interest come up yet? Are they scared of GDPR? If they find something, maybe they are reluctant because the public sentiment towards privacy is different and this would blow up in their face? Maybe you are right and they simply don’t scan. I would not rely on it though.
Of course the lived situation in the US is significantly more oppressive than in the EU. The crimes of ICE, the constant surveillance with flock, the fcc threatening free speech… it’s insane. We need to make sure that in the EU the situation won’t escalate as quickly as it did in the US, because there are plenty political parties and some governments who are trying.
Yes, and in both US and rest of the world police can use deadly force when their life is in danger. The laws are effectively the same. In practice:
Talking about what “legal framework” allows to happen while ignoring reality is pointless, disingenuous and purposefully misleading.
You lost me mate, and my patience for the insults has run thin too. All the best to you
I’d had so many police visits in my teenage years in the 90s and early 00s if there were this level of automated surveillance.
She said she was going to shoot the student and/or the school. Snapchat did the right thing. She is not the victim here.
Wanting(venting) frustration is not school shootings. Your “Justice” system is broken and your government spies massively on you.
Edit: not wanting but venting.
Saying you want to shoot students or the school should not be ignored. If you were the parent of the student, would your preferred course of action is do nothing?
The amount of times I said I was going to kill my sister in my life would have gotten me arrested if the government were listening to me. Anyone who knows me knows I love my sister, and would obviously never kill her. Hyperbole is frequently used in all aspects of human communication, and anyone who says it should be grounds for investigation is either lying, or stupidly believes that those in power could ever be trusted with such privileges.
I can relate to that. But that is very different than sharing you want to shoot an unrelated (biological) student or the school.
Would you prefer if all serious threats on social media were ignored?
Ah yes, the old, “any act of state surveillance is acceptable as long as it in theory could increase the safety of children by the width of a single electron.”
This is what the country that was founded on “give me liberty or give me death” has degenerated into.
I’m fine with monitoring Snapchat and actioning death threats. Not sure if you caught this part, but its AI that monitors looking for death threats, not humans.
You are advocating for the death of children.
The policies you support will, on net, kill far more children than they save. These inevitably have an extremely high false-positive rates. For every one actual school shooter you catch, you end up ruining the lives of a thousand innocent children. Many of those will have their lives completely disrupted, many dying early deaths of from suicide and drug overdose.
You are are advocating for the death of children.
The issue with surveillance is that it relies on the assumption that the people with the privilege to access the information are honorable enough to only use it when necessary and only use it truthfully. I don’t trust our country or corporations not to have an AI “hallucinate” a death threat so that they have reasonable cause to detain anyone they want whenever they want.
Plus, I didn’t really think it’s all that different between my sister and I and a teacher and their students. My wife was a teacher, and while she never said she wanted to shoot a student, she’s certainly said she wanted to strangle one. Most of the other teachers I know have said similarly violent things. I also used to work with doctors, and they often say similar things as well.
People with tough jobs often release stress with violent candid statements about things that frustrate them, then go on to obviously never actually do anything violent. Again, it’s called hyperbole, and is a very common thing across all language. Even if this AI was completely infallible and couldn’t be used dishonestly, it would still have so many false positives that it would be nothing more than a boy who cried wolf.
Yes the fuck it should if it was said in a private message to close friends.
You wanna open up your DMs on every platform for people to fish through? I’m sure we can find a few things you’ve said that the majority of people would agree aren’t ok things to say.
It’s HEARTENING to Know these Platforms have the ABILITY to STOP atrocities and Almost Always choose NOT too! <3
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
And this is why I’ve moved away from snap, and most other platforms, I’m back to texting and using carrier pigeons.
know what platform doesn’t have this problem? simplex.
that’s why neonazis are using it and why you should too.
The duality of AI…one stops nonexistent threats another one happily puts you into danger
I get she was frustrated. I get this was a joke. You don’t make bomb jokes in line at the TSA either.
She may have overestimated the degree of privacy her DMs had. That’s also on her. Other e2e encrypted services are available to make the crass jokes. But if one of the three recipients had also failed to get the joke, a Signal chat would’ve sufficed to get those deputies showing up as well.
And one shouldn’t expect that a company, even of dwindling importance as Snapchat, won’t do everything in their power to cover their asses. Imagine if this teacher did go amok and they flagged it but did nothing.
She wasn’t in line at the TSA, regardless of what snapchats fine print says she had a reasonable expectation of privacy.
You missed the part where that was fully automated.
With E2EE someone at the other end of the communication would’ve sounded the alarm.But go on normalizing that authoritatian state.
I’m glad that other people see the problem that lies within such surveillance.She may have overestimated the degree of privacy her DMs had. That’s also on her.
Her fault for being too busy teaching kids and surviving on $40k salary instead of researching perfect OPSEC and going down the digital privacy rabbit hole
and thats one of the reason why one of my former co-worker refused to work in a public school district, back then it was 25-35k starting.(actually more like before the pandemic). and some places COL dont match the salary too.
Why not?
People are such goddamned babies.
So… what you’re saying is that using a smartphone is equivalent to being in the airport security line. That is a disturbing point of view.
You don’t make bomb jokes in line at the TSA either.
For several years, I was commuting by plane and I made a joke there, every time, always the same joke, about having a weapon.
Later, I stopped doing that when I saw they were different people there. The frustrated and underpaid kind.
What utter nonsense.
Would a teacher venting to a friend in her apartment with the windows open be overestimating her degree of privacy if overheard by a neighbor and reported to police? How about if she’s on a phone call and law enforcement “happens” to be monitoring the call? In a pubic park? In a coffee shop? In her car with the windows open?
It is perfectly reasonable to expect a joke shared over a private chat with friends remain private without reading 50 pages of legal language.
Imagine telling a friend you accidently didn’t scan an item at the supermarket.
But there was a Ring doorbell nearby that captured the conversation and your identity
The next day, police are at your door to arrest you.
That’s what they’re working towards. They want to eliminate privacy, especially online. Even the most innocent conversation will be taken out of context and used against you. Cases like this woman are being used to desensitize people to it. Slowly they’re “normalizing” this and people don’t seem to care at all.
It ain’t smart to make jokes like that in the TSA line, but it still shouldn’t lead to anything like this, either. Being in a line for a security check shouldn’t absolve you of your rights as a human being.
“Private” and “corporate messaging platform” do not go together, at all. Ever.
The only “private” thing about snapchat is that it warns you when your friend takes a screenshot of your profile, chat, or snaps. Which you can easily bypass by using a second phone. Well that and disappearing snaps and messages so you can cheat on your spouse more easily.
I was involved with someone a few years younger than myself (fit well into the >=(age/2+7) rule, don’t worry) and she said she wished I had snapchat so she could send me photos privately. I explained to her that 1) I’m not the kind to spread nudes and I delete them after a relationship is over anyway, 2) if I wanted to, I could just as easily use my spare phone to take photos of her snaps so it’s a false sense of security for her and 3) snapchat isn’t end to end encrypted and they store snaps even if I can’t see them again. I then proceeded to explain the importance of end to end encryption to her. I ended up receiving nudes over Signal and kept my word and deleted them when we stopped seeing eachother. But it took quite a bit of trust in me for her to be OK with this, whereas people are much looser on snapchat because nobody actually thinks about how little privacy it REALLY provides.
So, she was willing to trust Snapchat to secure her privacy, whereas you had to earn her trust for her to believe you would secure her privacy, while being in a relationship with you. This goes to show how the population thinks. Corporations will take care of me, but the people around me will fuck me over. 😒
Yes. It’s because a corporation, particularly a distant foreign one, is anonymous so you don’t think about it as much whereas if some local guy leaked her nudes, it would most likely reach her friends and family. At least that’s what I think is the reason.
To the witless idiots defending authoritarianism to stop school shootings, If this sort of shit stopped school shootings then I guess we wouldn’t have school shootings.
Guess it doesn’t. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/school-shootings-this-year-how-many-and-where/2026/01
I do get the angry anti-2A people willing to take everyone’s guns to stop school shootings, because besides one italian kid shooting an insurance CEO, you aren’t really making good use of that amendment to hold your government accountable in the first place.
