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.
I’m glad this person’s life was semi-ruined by using big tech.
I am tired of normies using horrible platforms and then acting Pikachu-level shocked when they have horrible privacy violations.
Tech illiteracy + Big tech exploiting tech illiteracy = profit and constant surveilance
and normies are too damn stupid to get it, and every once in a while one of them gets fucked, and then… suddenly… nothing changes yet again
and these normies with their acceptance of any TOS, even the shittiest of shit, and making opting out some sort of social misstep, like “What?! You really don’t use WhatsApp?” with an ugly look, means I am glad these assholes occasionally suffer for their ignorance
You’re so unique and smart.
I’ve been slowly dragging my family kicking and screaming away from surveillance state shenanigans but it’s hard.
It really is. I get the sentiment that there can be schadenfreude.