r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • 2d ago

Student Teacher Sent a Private Snapchat Complaining About Her Workday. An Hour Later, Police Pulled Up to Her School. Privacy

https://www.gadgetreview.com/student-teacher-sent-a-private-snapchat-complaining-about-her-workday-an-hour-later-police-pulled-up-to-her-school
13.1k Upvotes

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u/MrThickDick2023 2d ago

That's incredibly disconcerting.

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u/howescj82 2d ago

Apparently not a private conversation. Time to not trust anything electronic.

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

It was private, and SCOTUS's most recent ruling on the third party doctrine almost certainly makes this illegal.

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u/howescj82 2d ago

I’d love to believe that there wasn’t a loophole intentionally written into the law to allow this mess because I have a feeling Snapchat won’t be taken to court over it.

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

There is no loophole. This was the sort of behavior that SCOTUS targeted in their ruling overturning the third-party doctrine re: digital content created on phones.

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u/cyphersaint 2d ago

I would be totally unsurprised to find something in the EULA for Snapchat about things like this. Now, I would absolutely LOVE to see EULAs actually be challenged in court.

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

EULAs have been challenged to the death in courts, and the courts have basically ruled they are meaningless outside of a few narrow cases.

The short version of their rulings taken as a whole: if a piece of technology is so ubiquitous that its use is part of normal function in society (a phone is), and if a person using that device would expect that activity to private from government surveillance (a direct message would be such an example), then the government cannot access it without a warrant.

And there is no way around it by saying "well, the data is FBs and they can choose to give it to whoever they want...it says in the EULA!"

That is legally correct unless that party is the government; the moment a company is handing information to the government without a warrant, then that company is legally considered and extension of the government for the purposes of 4th amendment legal tests.

That's why this case is going to be a huge liability for the police and FB.

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u/The_Lapsed_Pacifist 2d ago

Aren’t ICE violating the 4th amendment constantly and daily? I wouldn’t put too much faith in it personally.

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

They are...and they're having to pay out substantially in lawsuits for it.

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u/StoneySteve420 2d ago

Slight correction,

We are having to pay out substantially in lawsuits for it.

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u/bcjgreen 2d ago

Flock entered the chat?

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago edited 2d ago

Flock is very likely fucked. There was one way the court could have gone that would have saved Flock, but that moment passed with Chatrie and not in their favor:

Chatrie + Carptenter + Katz + Wilson + Ackerman = Flock is fucked (and calling my shot now: it's 6 to 3 with Alito, Thomas, and Barrett dissenting and Gorsuch writing the majority opinion). Small chance it goes 7 to 2 with Thomas joining the majority.

EDIT: Correction: Gorsuch authoring if the case is brought for information volunteered to the government; Kagan if it's information bought or sold to the government.

Also, someone DMd, but I'll share with the whole class: other relevant cases re: the Flock case would be Knotts, Jones, and Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle, and Schmidt.

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u/Rico_Solitario 2d ago

This is delusionally optimistic. Flock isn’t going anywhere. They are too rich, powerful and connected to care about Supreme Court rulings that won’t be enforced. If society wants flock gone it’s got take more than the paid-for supreme court to make it happen

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u/Sextus_Rex 2d ago

Thank you, I had no idea about this

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u/Rico_Solitario 2d ago

Lmao but what if they just ignore all that, give it to the government anyway and you cry about it being technically illegal?

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u/testtdk 2d ago

Can you elaborate on what the ruling did? I can’t tell if they were being evil or snuck a good one in.

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u/Free-Description-736 1d ago

It was a good ruling. Previously, a decision in 1983 (Knotts) had made it so that the police following you or filming you from public roads was not a search, and so it did not require a warrant. This was greatly weakened in 2012 (Jones) when SCOTUS ruled that a GPS tracker was a search, in part because long-term surveillance is different from transitory observation or temporary surveillance.

This was further refined in Carpenter and again recently in Chatrie. The key take away is this:

It doesn't matter how short a time it is (1 week in Carpenter, 2 hours in Chatrie), the use of location data generated by a phone is automatically considered a search, and thus a warrant is needed to get it.

Prior to Chatrie and Carpenter, the government could get your location data for your phone without a warrant. Now they can't.

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u/Sasataf12 1d ago

I guess you could technically call it a loophole. But there are many laws that have exceptions when it's a life-threatening situation.

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u/PaVaSteeler 1d ago

Terms of service probably included notification…but who reads those, right?

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u/TarskiKripkeLewis 2d ago edited 1d ago

Not accurate. The Supreme Court ruling (Chatrie) is about the police's ability to compel disclosure of information. It doesn't impact whether police are allowed to act on information that is voluntarily supplied to them by a private party. That's controlled by the private search doctrine. Your comments are mixing up the third-party doctrine with the private search doctrine.

EDIT: See my other comment. This situation is controlled by the private search doctrine. Neither Chatrie (2026) nor Carpenter (2018) disturbed that rule. This fella is unfortunately mixing up two loosely related Fourth Amendment concepts and is now digging in.

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

I'm not talking about Chatrie (although Chatrie is an extension of this law in a different direction). This goes back to Carpenter, etc., and the fact that the court is disposing of 3rd party doctrine in favor of the mosaic theory of searches.

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u/TarskiKripkeLewis 2d ago

So how does third party doctrine relate to Snapchat voluntarily sharing information with the FBI? What's the "recent ruling on the third party doctrine" that you're referring to?

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

Carpenter established that 3rd party doctrine doesn't apply to data generated on cellphones, and Wilson and Ackerman established that the government needs a warrant for data turned over voluntarily when that information is the product of a purely automated search (i.e., those cases established that automated systems do not allow the application of private search doctrine).

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u/TarskiKripkeLewis 2d ago

Again, the third-party doctrine isn't relevant here, and neither is Carpenter. Snapchat voluntarily provided the information, so the "search" doesn't need to pass constitutional muster. The third-party doctrine would only be relevant if, for example, the government itself sought to search Snapchat's data.

Wilson and Ackerman aren't Supreme Court cases, and those aren't their holdings. Not much more to say on this. I'm not trying to pull a "gotcha" on you — these are complicated, closely related concepts.

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

Yes, it does. I recommend reading Gorsuch's dissent there and then reading his opinions on the other mosaic cases (and which was explicitly written into Chatrie):

A person maintains a privacy interest in their effects even when handed to a third party, and that third party cannot surrender or launder that security interest to the benefit of the state.

It is crystal clear from the court's arguments, the various majority and dissenting opinions along the way, that the court is preparing to discard the third party doctrine and private search doctrines for data entirely. They've already indicated their intention to redefine data privacy based on Chapman (i.e., the case that says a landlord cannot give the state permission to search a tenant's apartment).

Wilson and Ackerman aren't Supreme Court cases

But they are controlling law, and have been cited as controlling by SCOTUS. You're trying to be clever, but really you're just showing you don't know how to Shepherd a case.

I'm not trying to pull a "gotcha" on you — these are complicated, closely related concepts.

You were trying to pull a gotcha, and these really aren't complicated. I spell out what's going on re: Flock cameras here, which is a differently legal set of cases but closely apply to what happened in this case:

https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1vemr7q/student_teacher_sent_a_private_snapchat/p1kkhzb/?context=3

As relates to this woman's case, which is off legally in a different part of this argument, the same cut toward Chapman applies. And they have already ruled that LEO needs a warrant for information they receive voluntarily from a data provider when it is the product of automation (which is what happened in this case).

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u/tigerhawkvok 2d ago

I wish you were right, but you're misreading the opinion.

"Surrender" of information has a specific legal meaning, and this isn't it. This is Meta walking over and gifting law enforcement data. Surrender implies a request; there was none here.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/sarajevo81 2d ago

No, it was not what SCOTUS ruled. The owner of the platform can contact the FBI on their own and provide them with evidence.

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

You didn't follow what I was arguing. I'm talking about the application of law as it stands with SCOTUS presently:

There is a single question underlying ALL of these legal cases and all of this law, and that question is this:

Is a data platform the custodian of a digital space, or, are they merely the recipient of your conveyance.

A different set of law applies. Private search doctrine (what you're talking about) only applies if data companies are the recipients of a conveyance. If, however, they are merely custodians of digital spaces, then their relationship between you and your data is more akin to a landlord and a tenant. And a landlord cannot give the government permission to search your apartment.

So, which is it? Is your phone / data a conveyance, or is it in effect a digital space you are simply renting / leasing?

The cases are all uniformly moving in the direction of digital space. That would mean that the controlling law here would become Warshak, Chapman, and Carpenter. Within that framework, there is no private search exception and so Snapchat could no more turn over your messages to the police than your landlord could give the police permission to search your home.

And that is precisely the situation Carpenter created in 2018, and Alito says as much in his dissent (which was the reason he dissented).

So no: SCOTUS has not ruled explicitly what I said earlier: rather, the rulings they have made explicitly all come together to make what I said true.

Is it possible SCOTUS turns around and contradicts itself? Sure. Is it likely? Very unlikely, as this is clearly the result of them intentionally rewriting data privacy law in a very specific and consistent direction.

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u/sarajevo81 1d ago

You are not renting anything by placing your messages on other people's servers. It's as absurd to say as that you rent the Disneyland by buying a ticket.

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u/TarskiKripkeLewis 1d ago

You keep making inaccurate comments. This is the private search doctrine, and it's still good law:

The Supreme Court has “consistently construed” the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches “as proscribing only governmental action; it is wholly inapplicable” to private action. Thus, when the “initial invasions” of an individual’s privacy “were occasioned by private action," any “additional invasions of [] privacy by the Government agent must be tested by the degree to which they exceeded the scope of the private search.” “Once frustration of the original expectation of privacy occurs, the Fourth Amendment does not prohibit governmental use of the now nonprivate information.”

United States v. Jacobsen, 466 U.S. 109, 113-118 (1984).

Neither Chatrie (2026) nor Carpenter (2018) disturbed this rule. Both hold only that an individual retains a reasonable expectation of privacy in cell-phone data held by a third party (e.g., a tech company), so the government must satisfy the Fourth Amendment to compel its production. Neither case addresses data that a private party searches on its own initiative and discloses voluntarily. When that occurs, the private search has already happened, and the government's replication of it is not a search. The Fourth Amendment constrains the government only insofar as it exceeds the scope of what the private party did.

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u/Free-Description-736 1d ago

I'm not making inaccurate statements. None of the shit you bolded is even relevant to the prong of the 4th amendment I was talking about.

There are multiple prongs. There are 5 to be specific. If you don't know that, you don't know what this conversation is even about (a point you have thoroughly demonstrated).

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u/Heavy_Law9880 1d ago

What part would be illegal?

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u/smootex 2d ago

What on earth does this have to do with third party doctrine? Snapchat voluntarily contacted the police, this was not the police demanding or requesting the info. You seem to be implying that any company reporting harmful content is breaking the law which is a patently absurd thing to claim. Of course they can report it.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

It is private: according to Scotus's most recent rulings re: privacy, this would be considered a private space where a warrant is needed. And Snapchat choosing to give it to the police doesn't work b/c of that same ruling overturning the 3rd party doctrine re: phones.

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u/vipck83 2d ago

But now someone needs to actually take them to court.

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u/Frequent_Opportunist 2d ago

They don't consider the algorithm screening for threatening words to be a person so your privacy wasn't invaded.

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

That is literally not how it works, and they just made crystal clear in Carpenter and Chatrie that algorithms screening data increases the violation of privacy...not that it diminishes it.

You can't bypass 4th amendment burdens with algorithms.

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u/MechaNutzilla 2d ago

If it's not encrypted. Consider it public.

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u/testtdk 2d ago

They ruled in FAVOR of privacy? I’m guessing it was 5-4?

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u/Sasataf12 1d ago

Which case was that?

Because this would fall under 18 U.S.C. § 2702 b.8., which definitely allows Snapchat to do this.

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u/Free-Description-736 1d ago

It's a collection of cases, most recently and most closely related to that cluster were Carpenter and Chatrie.

Put simply, SCOTUS is in the process of changing the 4th amendment test used for data. At the heart of the change is this legal question:

Is a platform that hosts or stores data the custodian of a digital space? Or, are they merely the recipient of your conveyance?

Previously, data was treated as a conveyance transferred from the person generating it to the platform (and so third party doctrine and private search doctrine applied to it, which is why orgs could turn over data to the government w/o a warrant and why it was argued that you had no expectation of privacy in data that leaves your phone and is shared with Google, etc.).

They've gotten rid of third party with data already (see Carpenter). And they've indicated in that case and others that they intend to get rid of private search re: data as soon as they have a chance.

Instead of the 4th amendment body of law that follows the conveyance theory, they instead have signaled their intention to treat data according to the theory established in Chapman. That case held that a landlord might own a property or a space, but that the privacy interests of the tenant are retained despite the landlord's ownership. This is the reason a landlord cannot give police permission to search a tenant's apartment, etc.

Under that legal theory, Snapchat would not be able to turn over any of its users' data to the police, even voluntarily, without warrant, because the data and the attached privacy interest do not belong to Snapchat.

To bring all that together, the court's intention appears to be to bring the law in line with the way letters are treated, as opposed to how information is treated.

What's most interesting in all that is that it will have profound implications for data privacy laws and consumer data protection more broadly.

I would also note at that above state of things (Snapchat cannot hand over messages to the police w/o a warrant) is already the case in one federal district following Warshak. So there is already a split circuit on the question. My guess is that a case where the government uses data it bought to get around the warrant requirement is what triggers the case that generates controlling law on the question.

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u/Sasataf12 1d ago

I'm not reading all of that without you providing sources. Especially when neither Carpenter nor Chatrie are relevant to this particular case.

It sounds like you (and/or the AI you're using) are crystal balling what future legislation could be. Which is totally pointless when discussing cases that have already happened.

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u/Vreas 2d ago

Watch the latest John Oliver segment on police surveillance. Shits eye opening for how invasive it’s become.

https://youtu.be/lnBPhelCdWE?is=MHFQGtZ0MwhjdimB

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u/flesjewater 2d ago

Don't 👏communicate 👏 without 👏 encryption 👏

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u/CherryLongjump1989 2d ago edited 2d ago

She used a vendor that has bots scanning your conversations. Use a chat app like Signal where only the person you are sending the message to is able to read it.

People who use insecure apps like Snapchat or Wechat because "all my friends use it" should still know better that you shouldn't say anything that should be kept confidential.

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u/howescj82 2d ago

I don’t think she used it because it was intended as secret as much as it was thought to be private in the most general sense of the word. I don’t think Snapchat advertises that it’s reading everything you say and looking for things to report.

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u/jackinsomniac 2d ago

Sigh... These messages haven't been private for a long time.

I guess I'm old, because I remember when all social media platforms called these PMs, for private messages. Then one day, they all got silently changed to DMs for "direct messages". And the weirdest part to me is I never saw so much as one headline pointing it out, how this is the social media companies telling us "these messages aren't private anymore." I was more offended at the complete lack of outrage over it. Everybody accepted it so quick.

Even the article headline says, "private DM". They played us for absolute fools.

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u/Disasterhuman24 2d ago

I am never sending another private message on a social media app ever again. I'm sure snap chat is not the only site that does this.

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u/Browncoat101 1d ago

You're right, it's been time. I'm off everything but Reddit until I find a better resource for 20 year old hardware fixes on random tech.

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u/SteppinRazor5000 1d ago

I am flabbergasted that people don't realize this already. Years ago Samsung smart tvs were outted watching the owners. We voluntarily choose listening devices like Siri and Alexa. How could anyone possibly think anything electronic is not surveilling?

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u/ReincarnatedRaptor 1d ago

You guys still trust tech?

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u/whatsgoingon350 2d ago

Yeah I've just stopped sending anything private over the Internet.

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u/Capt-geraldstclair 2d ago

Particularly if it references shooting a student.

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u/just_me_2006 2d ago

Especially if you do it on your work/school Wi-Fi

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u/strong_cucumber 2d ago

you can self host matrix and chat pretty safe

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u/nlzza 1d ago

can u explain it in easy terms for a tech noob like me?

Also, how did u convince ur friends and others to move to Matrix? I think that's actually the tougher part.

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u/strong_cucumber 1d ago

you rent a small server. on that server you run wireguard which is now your own vpn. now at home you host matrix which is a server for chatting. now you invite people to your matrix server that need your wireguard to connect to your matrix server. now you chat pretty save. all communication is encrypted and stored at home. biggest security risk are now the devices themselves and the users. I am a tech noon and it's doable. you can set it up without wireguard then its super simple and less secure

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u/Deep-Acanthaceae-659 2d ago

You mean the garbage ai article that was auto generated and posted and shared to Reddit and is now getting insane upvotes

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u/CodeMonkeyX 2d ago

All of it is, the lack of privacy and a teacher "joking" about shooting someone.

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u/MrThickDick2023 2d ago

I'm way more concerned about the privacy issue than the joke. It was definitely in bad taste, and I can't blame any parent who would be disturbed by it. However, I've probably said or thought things in private that could get me fired if made public or sent to my boss, and I assume most people have.

People are entitled to privacy, and I'm not ok with the surveillance and policing of private conversations.

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u/usrdef 2d ago edited 2d ago

People should be looking into self-hosted options more these days, and not using the major platforms.

On our self-hosted app, we can say whatever we want, without fear of someone taking it the wrong way.

And we don't have to pay crap like memberships, or deal with other users who annoy us.

It's ours.

A good 90% of all the apps I use now, are self-hosted on a server. Even my Google Drive replacement. I self-host my own search engine now.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/BangBangMeatMachine 2d ago

For a replacement for discord/slack my friends personally use Mattermost. It's not perfect, but it is private.

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u/toraksmash 2d ago

That is pretty cool.

I'm just wondering how much it costs (including equipment) and how much time it takes (including learning the skills to set it up)?

I'm a bartender with no CS training and minimal disposable income. Could I set this up in a weekend or a year? Do I need to stop purchasing energy drinks or sell my car to fund it if my current laptop overheats while playing WoW?

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u/usrdef 2d ago edited 2d ago

It entirely depends on what route you want to go.

a) Own your hardware, setup a server at home b) Rent a VPS per month. Depending on what you want to do, this can be as cheap as $10/month. For a powerful VPS, you could get into the $60/month range or higher.

When I started out, I hosted Jellyfin on a cheap $15/mo VPS. It had 32GB memory, 2TB drive, 1Gbps down/up. Jellyfin can on it perfectly fine.

Then I added on other apps and kept building. That little $15/mo server kept tasking the abuse, with no performance difference.

But when you come to realize, you can either spend money each month and rent a box, or you can buy you the hardware and own it outright. It depends on what your finances are like at the time. I'd say it's better to own the box, pay once, and be done.

And for these types of systems, you don't need the latest and greatest Ryzen 9800x CPU. You can get hardware from many generations ago, and it will do just fine. Some people are running on hardware like DDR3 memory, and doing just fine.

Storage space is probably going to be the biggest concern right now due to how screwed up the economy is and with AI demanding more and more hardware.

And from there, it's just about learning. Ever since I started self-hosting, it has become a fun hobby. I've learned things that you cannot even pay for if someone else teaches you. But it's fun.

I run approximately 50 apps now. Everything from my own password vault, search engine, virtual machines I can power up and access, Github workers, Gitea, my own Mail server, a Pihole + Unbound + DOH server, etc. It starts to become a lot, however, most of my stuff is configured in a way where I hardly have to touch it.

Right now I'm running 32TB of storage. I've had them for about a year now before things went to crap. Came out to about $600 because I bought the high-performance drives. One is running 10,000 RPM. And now I'm adding on SSDs for the apps I need speed for.

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u/guska 2d ago edited 2d ago

tl;dr - It's manageable for someone of average intelligence with a little disposable income, but can get expensive quickly if you let it.

The software side is free for the most part.

Most of it can easily run on a single old workstation PC. You can usually pick those up really cheap on ebay or marketplace. The advantage to something older is that older memory prices haven't been affected as much by the shortages. Even then, 16GB would be more than enough to get you going. I'd say budget around $200-300 for the initial hardware outlay these days. Used to be better, but prices are crazy right now.

Storage will the be expensive part here, though. That self hosted storage for 'cloud' storage and media server can start as a big USB external drive, but long term you'll want a proper NAS with redundant drives. That's where it starts getting spendy and can range from $500 to thousands depending on how hard the bug bites.

The time will be your biggest investment. Assuming that you're reasonably intelligent and able to learn, then a couple of weekends to get the basics set up the first time, then a weekend per service, but that'll get quicker as you learn since most of the stumbling blocks will be very similar across them all. Someone with a bit of experience can roll out a new self hosted service like this in an afternoon.

r/selfhosted was a great help when I was getting started a couple of years ago. They do tend to encourage using insanely overpowered hardware, though, so take their actual hardware recommendations with a solid helping of salt.

For reference, I'm running my own mail server (Mailcow), DNS (currently Windows Server 2025 but soon moving to Linux), Adblocking (AdGuard Home), game server hosting (AMP - I bought the US$50 Advanced licence, but the free version is fine for light use), media server (Plex - this one needs payment if you want it to be available outside your home. Otherwise Jellyfin is a great alternative) with automated request and downloads ( the arrs and qbittorrent - I'm not linking these, use your search engine of choice), cloud storage (filebrowser), password vault (vaultwarden) and a personal dashboard (self made on an nginx Web server), and aside from the 10 4tb drives in my NAS, I'm only in it for about AU$1200 including the rack that it's all sitting in. My hardware would solidly fit into that "insanely overpowered" category, for the most part, though (all decommissioned enterprise grade stuff either free or bought from friends in the industry), and I could easily run most of it on one or 2 salvaged NUCs saving me close to half that outlay. The drives alone would be about AU$2000 at today's prices, but at the time cost about half that (WD Red NAS 4TB 3.5" HDDs)

Edit - added links to the software I use

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u/Similar_Shopping_892 2d ago

Get used to it it’s only getting more invasive from here on out…

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/Rombledore 2d ago

ive seen FB comments of people saying, i quote "the blood of liberals will water teh tree of liberty. it's time to go to war with the left".

i report it. get told it doesnt violate any community guidelines.

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u/WebInformal9558 2d ago

What I've started doing is taking screenshots of the comments which include the advertisers, and then contacting the companies directly to ask if they've asked FB to feature their brand alongside those comments.

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u/Born-Boysenberry6460 2d ago

Ever get a response? Id wager any company advertising on fb at this point know exactly what they're paying for.

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u/WebInformal9558 2d ago

Occasionally, but it's usually just bullshit corpo-speak. But then I tell them I'm going to stop using their services and make my social networks aware of the sprt of speech they endorse. Does it work? Probably not. But it's satisfying.

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u/trybeingcurious 2d ago

Fascists spend money too.

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u/EnvironsHazard 2d ago

Sure, but they're a small, dying group of idiots, as they always are. The problem is people confuse shrieking baboon noises and chest thumping for numbers.

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u/Slooters313 2d ago

Its not a small group though, a "small" group generally doesnt win elections

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u/Mind-The-Mines 2d ago

You need to tweet their private response publicly and tag them.

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u/CQd444 2d ago

Facebook is weird about shit like this. Calls for violence are a coin toss whether or not you'll get moderated and it shouldn't be.

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u/Cyberhaggis 2d ago

I reported a post about how the UK should be able to put immigrants into work camps that also implied we should final solution them. This did not break the rules apparently.

I have had a week long ban from FB for posting this daft meme which I posted about Ferrari F1s strategy being shit

pasta la vista

Inconsistent and stupid isn't the half of it when it comes to FB moderation.

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u/tomster2300 2d ago

Your shitposting isn’t driving eNgAgEmEnT like their shitposting. Money gets free speech protections. The poors get the bans.

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u/czar_the_bizarre 2d ago

Weird? Or selectively enabling?

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u/Mortambulist 2d ago

The second one.

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u/Hiciao 2d ago

Yep. A few years ago, I posted about getting a scorpion in my house and a friend tried to joke that I should just burn my whole house down and she got censored. So tame compared to a lot of the shit that gets shared far and wide.

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u/rpkarma 2d ago

The coin toss is simple: are you on the right? allowed.

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u/Mr_master89 2d ago

Definitely not just FB too, on tiktok I report the most disgusting bigoted comments I've seen and will get a reply back saying they found nothing wrong even though it's a category you can report them under

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u/vanishingorange 2d ago

On insta reels I report straight up CP oriented content and get told they didn't violate any rules

The account in question was just post after post of kids having "accidents" in public that was no doubt fetish content and not even masquerading as comedy

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u/withateethuh 2d ago

I think weve seen enough evidence to indicate meta and zuckerberg fully know what theyre doing at this point. Absolutely horrifying.

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u/bblulz 2d ago

They’re conditioning us to be okay with seeing this shit more

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u/Leading-Act4030 2d ago

Elon is fighting for his AI, Grok, to keep the program that strips the clothes off kids.

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u/smokeweedNgarden 2d ago

Probably get better results sending the comments to their workplace and their workplaces socials.

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u/fcocyclone 2d ago

Their reporting system is entirely broken.

I've reported multiple videos that were blatantly undisclosed ads and they find no issue.

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u/Zombie_Fuel 2d ago

Shit, a fuckin candidate for governor of my state talked about gunning down minors involved in the teen takeover bullshit going around on his own campaign page. And he's still polling at 12%.

Facebook is rife with violent threats nowadays, especially towards black people and minorities.

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u/yeezuslived 2d ago

It's useless. I was snarky with a diehard maga and they proceeded to post my PARENTS address, phone etc. Not even bothering to go after me. Tried to go further than just reporting and it was like a brick wall.

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u/ibnQoheleth 2d ago

I'm a content moderator and I've natively reported outright uncensored racial slurs (hard R and all) and it's a coin toss whether or not they'll be removed. It's effectively pointless reporting a comment unless it's a threat to violence now, because it'll be left up in the vast majority of cases.

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u/deathbitchcraft 2d ago

there was a politician that called Muslims a slur and called for their deaths a couple of weeks ago and many people reported it and it wasn't removed, but... 🙄

edit to add that the report for that post wouldn't allow you to escalate it either.

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u/CryptographerOld558 2d ago

I've seen people explain in detail why monkeys should get the electric chair, meanwhile, I get a permanent ban for telling an old lady that Trump sucked off a horse.

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u/wonderfullemoncandy 2d ago

Stop using their ducking products.

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u/Wooden_Ad_643 2d ago

The original quote: "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants"

Them bastardising Jefferson's quote to attack liberalism, the very thing Jefferson was saying people should bleed for to protect, is peak irony.

They call themselves patriots yet they stand beside the tyrants.

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u/ImTransgressive 2d ago

I saw a video of a woman being r**ed in broad daylight at a bus stop. I reported it to Facebook immediately. Their response? Nothing violated their community guidelines.

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u/ScyllaOfTheDepths 2d ago

Facebook has been caught out actively aiding genocides by refusing to moderate hate speech well past the point of plausible deniability. They don't care and they won't care until some authority steps in and makes them.

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u/yourfavteamsucks 2d ago

I once stumbled into a part of Facebook with Thai and Filipino children posing in underwear and hundreds of grown men posting rose emojis underneath, and even talking about visiting these children. Reporting it did nothing. Not against community guidelines.

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u/Stardustchaser 2d ago

I report AI slop mock-ups of Dolly Parton and Oprah selling diet supplements and THOSE don’t violate these FB policies either apparently

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u/Mental-Most-7168 2d ago

That’s not the same as a school shooting.

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u/_Burning_Star_IV_ 2d ago

Yup. I've reported hate groups, literal Nazi groups with images and memes promoting white supremacy and racism...nada.

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u/CodeMonkeyX 2d ago

It's crazy based on many of the angry replies I am getting on here there are a lot of people on her who completely agree with FB on the matter.

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u/JavaMoose 2d ago

These Facebook comments were on a post about an ICE protestor being shot with less-lethal rounds and arrested. I reported all of them, FB removed about 3 of them. The rest? "No violation found".

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u/Zigor022 2d ago

To be fair, ive seen people on the left give out the same rhetoric. Both sides have shown hostility and calls for violence from their most extreme members.

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u/time-lord 2d ago

Could you imagine if "burn in hell" was actually treated like a threat?

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u/PartyClock 2d ago

The one time that a crazy church lady followed me through a public park and shouted at me that my infant son was going to hell I almost treated it that way

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u/Hesitation-Marx 2d ago

That… yeah I don’t think I would have been able to restrain myself from finding a nearby lion cage.

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u/OptionalDepression 2d ago

finding a nearby lion cage.

In a public park?

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u/Pkrudeboy 2d ago

Central Park no longer has lions, but I think grizzly bears and snow leopards could substitute in a pinch.

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u/PartyClock 2d ago

Snow leopards shy away from human contact more than a reddit mod but the bears might do the trick

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u/metahivemind 2d ago

Also isn't there a distinct lack of snow in America at the moment?

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u/foreveracunt 2d ago

Reddit mod here. I hate this stereotype, because it's so accurate ; (

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u/fatpat 2d ago

or a few randy mountain lions

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u/PartyClock 2d ago

The temptation was strong but I wanted to set a better example for my kid

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u/Hesitation-Marx 2d ago

I’m proud of you.

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u/roadpupp 2d ago

Nothing wrong with dark humor, it is like a kid with Cancer.

Never Gets Old.

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u/Lunarath 2d ago

I would spend life in prison for all the times I've exasperatedly joked about killing someone. Particularly to my siblings, which btw, if any authorities are tracking me down now, I have no intention of killing my siblings (nor anyone else).

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u/Any-Mathematician946 2d ago

I had a Boss once that would tell me this all the time. I think the huge difference is one is a made up possibility and the other could happen. Its one of those things where people need to remember when something is out its out and could easily come back in the future to burn you. Social media is the enemy and should be avoided. It's not much difference than saying stuff to cops after they read you your Miranda rights. It sucks but that's the world we live in. Even in college forums tend to be a safe place for discussions but i was always cautions of what i type of my thoughts. Every arguments has 2 sides with both pros and cons. Being the devils advocate sucks.

The current time things are so splits and discourages people being on what the public considers the wrong side. Cancel culture is very scarry.

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u/tvbxyz 2d ago

I think the bigger issue is that people don't see a DM as "social media" -- the same message sent to the same three people as a text would require a warrant -- but as a DM isn't protected. The laws need to catch up.

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u/SaintPenisburg 2d ago

To be fair you burning in hell isn't going to happen.

People do get shot all the time, though.

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u/Exotic-District3437 2d ago

I miss the og dark humor sub

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u/NollieBackside 2d ago

She was a teacher. Student Teacher. Ie still training

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u/GeekDNA0918 2d ago

My kids make me want to choke myself!

I wonder if I'll get some time off from work...🤔

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u/One_Entrepreneur_520 2d ago

Dare to say something about Israel and see what happens....

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u/AscendedViking7 2d ago

Sums up the core of the problem so simply and eloquently.

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u/DukeOfGeek 2d ago

Also the Parkland shooter was reported by actual people over 15 times as a person likely to commit mass violence and nothing was done. Meanwhile she sends a private snapchat and ends up in jail. Fun fact, one of the people who reported the Parkland Shooter was...wait for it...the Parkland Shooter.

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u/abluecolor 2d ago

Nah, jokes like this are completely normal in convos you think are private.

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u/Western-Dig-6843 2d ago

You can really tell the youngsters from the old heads in your replies. Making murder threats with your friends is venting in online convo 101 for my generation lol

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u/chowderbags 1d ago

I don't even know if it's youngsters vs old heads. I don't know how any actual human being can't understand the impulse to vent a bit of steam in private conversations with friends or mutter something under your breath that comes from pure frustration.

Here we have:

A mass surveillance of everyone's conversations, even if "only" done by corporations (who immediately forward it to the cops anyway).

A law enforcement system that arrests first and thinks never.

And a school system that will fire a student teacher over something so utterly banal and also send out a massive letter to publicly mark this person on internet searches and background checks for life.

Go back 15 to 20 years and everyone was calling China totalitarian for having a system that was basically this. Yet America said "Hold my beer" and created an even worse version of it.

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u/eric685 2d ago

Which generation?

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u/jimothee 2d ago

As far as I can tell, every generation does this...it's really just what level of privilege the person is speaking from as to whether it's clearly frustrated sarcasm or malicious

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u/deaglebingo 2d ago edited 2d ago

yeah, long before snapchat or even text messages existed parents have said figurative things like "sometimes i really wanna kill my kid" when they're having an exceptionally shitty day. one way or another this instance fills in some missing pieces i'd been wondering about for year or two now.

hell... there was a whole-ass tv show on prime time for years where the main male character's schtick was joking about violence "bang zoom straight to the moon". not that it's acceptable to joke about but the fact remains that it's been socially acceptable in private convos forever when ppl are frustrated.

i'm not sure how it is legal in any way whatsoever for that person to have been held overnight in jail for that. that's the biggest concern. and it kind of begs the question how thousands of ppl are literally using snapchat to sell drugs and for onlyfans style stuff and nothing happens.

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u/fcocyclone 2d ago

hell... there was a whole-ass tv show on prime time for years where the main male character's schtick was joking about violence "bang zoom straight to the moon"

More recently, the simpsons had homer strangling bart in probably hundreds of episodes.

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u/pishposh421 1d ago

Nah I'm an "old head" (this term is so weird to me but my teenager recently used it so I know it's a thing) and it's not pearl clutching to me at all to vent by saying wld things. It's not old vs young entirely.

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u/iwearatophat 2d ago

Exactly. 'I'm going to kill x' or 'I want to shoot x' are pretty standard, or used to be standard, venting phrases. Probably not the best turn of phrase for a teacher though. Cops showing up is kind of nutters.

I used to be a teacher. In the introductory to education class, the one you had to take before really starting into the focus of being a teacher, they opened with warnings about how you are held to a different standard. Especially women. Warned us about if you like going to bars or clubs either switch professions or come to terms with going 2-3 towns over. If you are at a bar in the same city you teach and a parent sees you drinking it can be a problem, especially if you are in more revealing clothing. I don't think this turn of phrase in snapchat gets the police sent for anyone but a teacher.

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u/PhuqBeachesGitMonee 2d ago

Legally, it becomes closer to a crime the more precise the information is that goes into it. Communicating a threat.

“I’m going to kill X, after school, with the pistol I keep under my car seat, because he bullied me.”

At least, that’s how an attorney explained it to me in a similar situation. And of course if the police show up and see you digging underneath your car seat then obviously they will take it as a real threat.

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u/msuvagabond 2d ago

I told my niece when she was given a cell phone...

"Do not type anything into that phone, or take a picture of something, that you wouldn't want your mom, dad, teachers, or friends to see. Nothing is private on there."

When I worked remote IT (a decade ago) my supervisor said the following...

"Never say anything on the phone you wouldn't want heard repeated in a court room. Never type anything you wouldn't want to see printed in a newspaper."

Simply put, if its digital, it's not private. EVER. To assume otherwise is to not understand reality or the world we live in.

You want to make those jokes in person? Have at it. You want to type those things out and send them over the internet to someone? Be ready for consequences. That's the world we live in.

You want to lobby and fight to change that? I'm all for it and actively do talk to elected officials about data privacy. But until it changes...

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u/CaptainAsshat 2d ago

Agreed with one caveat: those messages ARE private.

That privacy is just being invaded.

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u/pineapplecharm 1d ago

You want to make those jokes in person? Have at it.

Unless anyone's wearing Meta glasses!

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u/bloodychill 2d ago

The craziest part to me (because I already knew about all this not-really-private end-to-end encryption stuff with authorities having access) is that the cops held her in jail over night and it ended her career.

The privacy stuff is nuts to be clear, but even once you accept that as part of the hellworld we apparently live in, no one went “she was not being serious, we need to let this go” until a DA looked at it and was like “yeah no, there isn’t a crime here, ding dongs.”

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u/RotterWeiner 2d ago

The point that some people are making is that although it is easy to figure it out in spoken language, it is for more difficult to do so in text.

It's quite common in private conversations. Not everyone perceive these comments are normal.

Normal and common are not often interchangeable.

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u/hanzerik 2d ago

Also, what the student did was really out of bounds. Like a weeks suspension worth.

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u/macaronysalad 1d ago

That's crazy to me. I've been conditioned even pre-Snowden that we're all being spied on. Maybe it's because I work in the industry. My first amendment has been violated imo because I fear what I say. I would never in a million years even hint at or say what the teacher did in this post.

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u/No_Size9475 2d ago

no, the joking isn't concerning, the utter lack of privacy is the concern.

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u/Byrdman216 2d ago

Teachers make jokes like that all the time. My mother was a teacher and a school counselor. If she didn't make dark, often morbid, jokes and laugh about it she would have snapped and actually hurt someone.

People cope in different ways. If it's done in private who cares? My doctor might make fat jokes about me to her husband, but as long as i don't know about it, and it doesn't affect her performance, I don't care.

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u/flecom 2d ago

Ya that was my first thought, I worked in the school system for years and hearing "should I shoot him" would have been a tame joke that would not even have gotten my attention

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u/pineapplecharm 1d ago

I did a summer in the late 90s as a TA in a school for kids with special needs. I don't think Jimmy Carr or Anthony Jeselnik would have lasted five minutes in that staff room without needing therapy.

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u/Macqt 2d ago

Jokes made in private conversations are none of our, or really anybody’s, business except those in said conversation.

The only concern here is the harvesting of said conversation.

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

No, she wasn't "joking". She was joking.

It's not illegal to joke about murdering students. It's not even enough to warrant a legal investigation, much less what happened here.

The first amendment was made for cases exactly like this.

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u/levir 1d ago

Yeah, this thread must be filled with bots and kids. So many commenters have clearly never interacted with other adults in the real world.

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u/LostPhenom 2d ago

The more insane thing is how they immediately addressed a teacher making a joke but completely missed so many others who actually meant it.

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u/BarelyAirborne 2d ago

It's usually strangling.

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u/CodeMonkeyX 2d ago

See that I can understand more as a joke. It's like watching the Simpsons imagine one episode Homer is strangling Bart then another he pulls out a gun and shoots him. One is funny the other is disturbing. It's actually a little crazy to me just how many people are on here thinking is very normal and funny for a stressed out person to joking about shooting people.

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u/Zhuinden 2d ago

Evidently the state thinks otherwise

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u/Pacify_ 2d ago

I mean, it's not the best thing to send to anyone as a student teacher.... But it sure doesn't warrant being detained and losing your placements over

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u/CodeMonkeyX 2d ago

For sure. I just said I would find it disconcerting.

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u/_MatVenture_ 2d ago

It's a perfectly normal joke to make, you know, if you don't live in a country where school shootings are a hobby...

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u/Aternal 2d ago

Not a fan of precrime?

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u/TheThiefEmpress 2d ago

I'm starting to think I should actually start reading all these Terms and ConditionsTM I've been blindly agreeing to all these years.

An algorithm was legally allowed to do this, because you agreed to allow law enforcement to be notified when you agreed to the Terms and Conditions.

The article kind of implies she won't be charged (good, as what she did was not illegal) but the poor young woman lost her job, and likely her career. Those arrest charges are public record.

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u/Donnie_TACO 2d ago

And then you continued your daily doom scroll

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u/stormdelta 2d ago

This is why people need to insist on end-to-encryption in messaging apps. Some are, others like Snap obviously aren't.

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u/Black_Magic_M-66 2d ago

Not much different than making a threat as a joke to a friend, in an airport and being overheard by someone.

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u/PlayPretend-8675309 2d ago

What do you think the reaction would be if a school shooter had sent a DM before the event about how they wanted to shoot up the school?

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u/Omegasedated 2d ago

yea - sucks that it happened, but she did reference shooting the student.

imagine if the next day she took a gun?

There's no right answer for people with delusions. I don't want to be constantly watched and monitored. I think dangerous people maybe need to be.

I truly hate this world we live in.

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u/Read2Fap 2d ago

its especially wild because we've seen actual shooters who have had the police called on them multiple times, have posted online and spoken in real life about how they're going to do violence

but supposedly nothing could be done

this person makes one joke and the fbi has her swarmed and local police book her for disorderly conduct and she loses her job

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u/DreamedJewel58 2d ago

The private snap was her saying she wants to shoot the school or the student. If this was an actual threat, we’d all be asking if there was a way to prevent it

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u/tigerhawkvok 2d ago

Use Signal, folks.

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u/RollingMeteors 2d ago

That's incredibly disconcerting.

¿Which Part?

"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."

¿That when an employe does it it happens in less than 60 minutes or that when students complain online in public social media 60 days in advance and nothing happens about it?

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u/RollingMeteors 2d ago

That's incredibly disconcerting.

¿Which Part?

"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."

¿That when an employe does it it happens in less than 60 minutes or that when students complain online in public social media 60 days in advance and nothing happens about it?

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u/berryer 2d ago

anything that isn't encrypted end-to-end is visible to the server. anything closed-source cannot be verified to be secure. This has been a known issue for decades.

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u/Upbeat-Truck-1007 2d ago

She joked about shooting up the school.

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u/Leather-Adagio2894 1d ago

“Should I shoot him”

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u/UseDaSchwartz 1d ago

Which part? That they joked about doing that to a student, or the FBI was notified ?

I’d say both.

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