this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2026
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Student Teacher Sent a Private Snapchat Complaining About Her Workday. An Hour Later, Police Pulled Up to Her School. (www.gadgetreview.com)
submitted 2 days ago by spaghettiwestern@sh.itjust.works to c/technology@lemmy.world
503 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

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.

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[–] isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] CanIFishHere@lemmy.ca -4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] isleepinahammock@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 2 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] CanIFishHere@lemmy.ca -2 points 1 day ago

That's a stretch. Your conjecture isn't supported by the facts of this story whatsoever.