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.
You’d all screech if it wasn’t flagged and someone got shot 🤷♂️
Fucked if you do, fucked if you don’t.
Just a thought, maybe have the common sense to not joke about bombs in the TSA line at the airport?
This is not about the TSA line, this is a chat that most people would presume to be private
Why don’t you show me where they advertise as a privacy platform or end to encryption. Or that they’ll sit on a text where a teacher makes a joke about shooting a school?
You have poor expectations and I’m willing to bet the vast majority here would screech if they sat on it and some kid was shot.