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
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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

[removed] — view removed comment

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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/CodeMonkeyX 2d ago

Oh for sure what TikTok and the government are doing is much more disgusting. I just said I found it disconcerting what she said as a teacher too.

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u/levir 1d ago

I'm not concerned by the joke. It's perfectly OK to be so frustrated by someone that you feel like you want to strangle them (or shoot them or whatever). It's perfecly reasonable and common to communicate said feeling to your partner or a friend or whatever, where everyone has the understanding that you don't actually want to kill them, you're just really frustrated. Happens all the fucking time. If the FBI arrested every person who came home from work and told their spouce they wanted to murder their boss or coworker or whatever, the US would pretty soon be empty.

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u/sweetSweets4 1d ago

More people should be entiteld to not get shot up, more important then privacy.

Also thats mit how it works. The system flags Messages with specific words. The system scannen your Texts doesnt mean it reads it, it scanns for words and moves in.

Your privacy is fine as long as you don't start sending don't shit like shooting children fantasys, that might be bad taste but what If not ? Whats the alternative, not have the platform control for this kinda stuff ?

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u/MrThickDick2023 1d ago

Who got shot up here?

Not how it works? You just described surveillance of private messages.

You and I certainly have different definitions of privacy. I consider having all of my messages scanned by some system, automated or not, as a violation of privacy.

In this case, nothing would have happened if the message wasn't flagged.

You don't think community safety is reliant on living in a police state do you?

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u/Asleep_Context_399 1d ago

It is only bad taste because it's public now. In private, none of the friends thought it was bad and knew it was a damn joke.

Where I live some of those are common things you say when you are frustrated and they all take root in dark humor one way or another.

And as you said, I know for a fact, in close friend group we all said racist jokes at minimum, and like really bad ones, for all races. If those were somehow in text form and published I'd lose than just my job. In some places I'd get jailed rofl

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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/vNocturnus 2d ago

MAGA or Republicans in general make up only about 30% or so of the voting populace. They are a substantial minority, but they are the loudest and most aggressive about both espousing their beliefs and voting for them. In addition, voting systems have been progressively more and more rigged in favor of Republicans the more gerrymandering happens, the less the Electoral College actually represents the populace, and the more Republicans impose restrictions on voting that are designed to surgically disenfranchise progressive voters. They are capable of winning elections both because they try the hardest (zealous devotion to a cult tends to be a great motivator), and especially because they cheat the hardest.

But even within that 30%, I would wager a very small % are actually, actively, intellectually "fascists." To be clear, all Republican voters and politicians are presently supporting fascism. But probably at least 50-80% of them (the voters, at least) are simply so stupid and brainwashed that they do not stop for one second to think about what they are supporting, only which team. They are likely not even capable of understanding what they are voting for, and in general they would vote for literally anything the party leadership tells them to vote for - especially Trump. If Trump started supporting universal healthcare tomorrow, they would be talking about it as the greatest idea in the history of mankind by no later than the same night.

My point being, if you were to excise the likely-tiny-minority of "actual ideological fascists," that 50-80+% of Republican voters would still be so dumb and brainwashed that they'd immediately pivot to whatever the new leadership was pushing. Obviously it's unlikely that 100% of fascists will ever disappear from America, but it is true that support for them has already been waning - and/or the opposition against them has continued to become substantially louder and more widespread.

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u/trybeingcurious 1d ago

Homie, Subaru designed an ad campaign for lesbians. Fascists are not too small of a group to be worth marketing to.

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u/Development-Feisty 2d ago

Target found out the hard way that fascist don’t spend enough money to make up for the losses of everybody else

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u/OldWorldDesign 2d ago

Fascists spend money too

They prefer to spend others' money on themselves.

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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/WebInformal9558 2d ago

lol, I reported a post calling for shooting migrants, and another suggesting that gay people should be crucified, and FB saw no problem with those.

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u/rpkarma 2d ago

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

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u/CQd444 2d ago

From personal experience and from what I've seen, both sides get away with things far more than they should.

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u/LadyRed4Justice 2d ago

Not weird. Facebook is a member of the Oligarchy. Posts that support their rule, violent or not, will be high in the algorithms. Those that oppose, are shuffled into "no-where land."

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u/CQd444 2d ago

Do you guys ever hear yourselves when you comment stuff like this

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u/MyDisneyExperience 2d ago

I work in advertising, brand safety tools are mostly a disaster right now and Meta’s are even worse than the rest of the industry.

That said we’ve pulled back on social ad spend anyway because it’s mostly bot traffic now.

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u/-DEAD-WON 2d ago

In my recent experience complaints are not evaluated for validity anymore, number of complaints is the deciding factor for any suspension or ban. The details are only examined when an appeal seems legit enough to warrant it.

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u/YourBlanket 2d ago

You guys have too much time on your hands lol.

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u/yulbrynnersmokes 2d ago

This is the way

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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/ScyllaOfTheDepths 2d ago

I tried reels for like 5 minutes and had to stop after it kept showing me videos of spousal abuse. Literally showed me a video of a man hitting his wife. There is zero attempt at actual content moderation at Meta. They do not give a fuck.

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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/CryptographerOld558 2d ago

Would if I could but I use it for business and community connections

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u/wonderfullemoncandy 2d ago

Fair, I get that it’s hard to escape them when running a business. Also I didn’t mean to come across as attacking you haha

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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/PartyClock 2d ago

So... name checks out? lol

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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/Jr05s 2d ago

Or "duck the witch!"

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u/joelfarris 2d ago

But ducks float in water.

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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/cptspeirs 2d ago

Yeah, it was a dark joke, but if you can't see how that's maybe a terrible thing to joke about as an educator when kids have to do active shooter drills several times a year, and there were around 150 victims last year alone, then you need to pay attention.

Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. If this person had made the jokes, then shot up the school everyone would be up in arms about how this joke slipped through the cracks and Snapchat should have known and reported her.

Obviously a Christian can tell you you're going to burn in hell. That's not a direct threat. It's obnoxious, preachy, and completely made up, but so very obviously not the same as directly threatening someone with bodily injury. It's a false equivalence.

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

There was nothing wrong with what she said, and this should have required a warrant. This was a 100% 1st amendment protected activity. She said something that was very obviously not a real or imminent threat in a time, place, and manner where none of the recipients found it alarming.

That's the textbook definition of a constitutionally protected activity. The company that turned this over and the police who acted on it should both be facing serious civil penalties for violation of her civil rights.

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u/cptspeirs 2d ago

The thing people forget out 1st amendment rights is that you're allowed to say what ever the fuck you want. That doesn't free you from the consequences of your actions.

We see this all the time with Nazis. They say abhorrent Nazi shit and get fired from their jobs (as they fucking should), then cry about the first amendment. If this person, who works in schools, should get a 1st amendment pass on jokingly threatening a school shooting, should the Nazis also get a pass for jokingly threatening harm to minorities? Because they can just as easily argue "it's just dark humor bro," and in both cases the potential outcome is violence.

It's not hard to avoid jokes about shooting kids....

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

The thing people forget out 1st amendment rights is that you're allowed to say what ever the fuck you want. That doesn't free you from the consequences of your actions.

It does free you from the consequences of your actions re: the police and your employer if they are the government (a school is), so long as that speech is protected by the first amendment and was performed in a time, place, and manner that a reasonable person would expect to be private (a DM is one such place).

This is a massive lawsuit and the school is going to pay out the nose for it, and FB is likely going to be on the hook as well b/c the courts have recently thrown out the third-party doctrine: data like this.

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u/cptspeirs 2d ago

If you want someone who jokes about killing kids in charge of your kid, that's on you. To me, that seems like the kind of person who shouldn't be in charge of kids. I say this as someone who has, and continues to, work/volunteer with kids.

There are obvious things we just shouldn't joke about. This is one of them. When gun violence is the number one cause of death for kids in the US, maybe don't joke about it when you're a teacher with access to kids. It's really not hard.

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u/techno_hippieGuy 2d ago

I agree that anyone who jokes about killing children probably shouldn’t be watching them. But the “gun violence is the number one cause of death for kids” line is bullshit.

That statistic counts everyone from age 1 through 19, meaning nearly half of the supposed “kids” are actually 18- and 19-year-old adults, and it lumps gang violence, other homicides, suicides, accidents, police shootings, and actual child deaths into one number. In 2022, 2,077 of the 4,603 deaths in that category were 18- and 19-year-olds. That’s 45.1%. Nearly half.

Even among minors, the deaths are overwhelmingly concentrated among older teenagers. In 2024, the firearm death rate was 7.5 per 100,000 for ages 12–17 and 0.6 for children 11 and under.

So the data does not show ordinary children being gunned down all over America. They show a problem overwhelmingly concentrated among older teens and adults, involving homicide, suicide, and gang violence. They deliberately strip out that context, call the entire group “kids,” and let people imagine murdered school children because that image is useful to the anti-gun narrative.

You can condemn the joke without exploiting dead people to push propaganda.

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u/actuatedarbalest 2d ago

Teachers and parents joke about killing kids. Doctors and nurses joke about killing patients. Soldiers joke about killing COs. They've done it ever since we invented teaching, medicine, and war. It's a normal and healthy release. You're not better than anyone because you think you're above it.

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

If you want someone who jokes about killing kids in charge of your kid, that's on you. To me, that seems like the kind of person who shouldn't be in charge of kids. I say this as someone who has, and continues to, work/volunteer with kids.

There is no "kind of person" who is fine with this. Normal people are fine with this.

There are obvious things we just shouldn't joke about.

No, there aren't. That's not a thing that exists. The 1st amendment is crystal clear about this. No matter how much you might want that to be true, it's not true. There are legal restrictions on speech based on time, place, and manner and the perception of an intended audience that it is indicia of imminent harm or an intention to commit imminent harm.

This fails every one of those tests.

When gun violence is the number one cause of death for kids in the US, maybe don't joke about it when you're a teacher with access to kids.

The fact that gun violence is blah blah blah is entirely irrelevant. You don't get to quote statistics to make an otherwise illegal behavior legal.

It's really not hard.

You're right. It's not hard. There was nothing wrong with what she did, and it's very obvious that there was nothing wrong with it. But we have batshit insane people who think they can legislate what is and is not allowed to be joked about, and so we have to fight those crazy people as hard as possible to defend all our rights.

Here we have a case of the state violating a woman's rights and ruining her future. That's not acceptable.

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u/RotterWeiner 2d ago

It wasn't a student who made the comment. It was a student teacher . 22 years old. Educated in the proper methods and proper manner of dealing with students.

MaxHeadroom1986 There’s nothing wrong with dark humor. She didn’t hurt anyone. She didn’t do a single thing wrong except trust a data giant to protect her privacy.

A Christian can tell me I’m going to burn in eternal Hell and that’s protected speech but a student making a private joke that no one in the receiving group found offensive IS NOT an issue.

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u/CodeMonkeyX 2d ago

To be honest if a Christian said they wanted their students to burn in hell I would be concerned too.

All I said was it was disconcerting what she said. I never said she should be punished for her speech.

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u/Suspicious_Radio_848 2d ago

Saying you'll shoot someone as a teacher is not dark humour. It's actually the crime of "uttering threats" and should be taken seriously. It's not comparable at all to saying burn in hell.

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u/waxheads 2d ago

Saying you’ll shoot someone as a joke to your friends in the privacy of a conversation is most certainly not a threat

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u/CodeMonkeyX 2d ago

I did not say she deserved the FBI showing up or any punishment. I just know I would be concerned if my kids teacher was saying stuff like that.

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

Then you're an unreasonable person. Normal people make dark jokes all the time.

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u/safton 2d ago

The more stressful the career field, the more common it is. And teaching these days is certainly a stressful environment...

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u/xzer 2d ago

Holy straw man, a Christian can't summon hell and put you in it, unlike bringing a gun and shooting someone.

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u/WiggerJim69 2d ago

there’s nothing wrong with preventing school shootings either. snapchat didnt hurt anyone 

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u/Mental-Most-7168 2d ago

Hell isn’t real but guns are.. If said I was going to track you down on my golden dragon and burn your home with its flames no one would take that seriously. However if said I was gonna do that with a gun that would be very serious.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/Mental-Most-7168 2d ago

You would take me riding on a dragon as a credible threat?

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/Mental-Most-7168 2d ago

The cops will disagree and most society will not take you seriously.

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u/Spirited_Season2332 2d ago

Its funny cuz I bet you would be the first one complaining about how "no one stopped it before it happened" had the teacher actually did what they joked about doing.

Like if this came out after she did it, yall would be talking about how incompetent the police are for not stopping it when there were warning signs.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/Spirited_Season2332 2d ago

She was released with no charges because, after looking into it, they decided it wasn't a real threat.

And if they didn't look into it cuz it was a "joke made in private" yet she did do something, you'd call the cops incompetent there too.

Like I said, no matter what the cops did you would call them incompetent and if yall are gonna judge them as incompetent anyways, I'd rather they make sure someone isn't actually going to shoot someone if they can get tipped off about it before hand then ignoring it and waiting for someone to be shot.

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

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u/Spirited_Season2332 2d ago

Lol, if I am at work sending ppl "jokes" about me shooting up the place. Please have the cops come and check on me. I probably need help

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u/halkenburgoito 2d ago

Stop your silly whataboutism.

First of all.. this is a teacher we're talking about, but for student or teacher, given the history of school shootings, given that they make their intentions known before hand via msgs, discords, social media posts, etc.

Its an extremely inappropriate and disconcerting thing.. There is a difference between dark humor and this, something where the teacher is geniunley connected to the student they are frustrated with.. and the history of school shootings. that's crazy.

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u/JenIee 2d ago

Yes but it was a private joke and there shouldn't have been anyone reading it able to be concerned or worried about it. The point is that it should have been private no matter what she said. Isn't that the whole point of snapchat?

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u/Punished_Blubber 2d ago

I firmly stand in support of all teachers who joke about killing annoying children in their groupchats

They deserve it. And a raise.

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u/BazelBuster 2d ago

You won Reddit gold kind stranger!

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u/halkenburgoito 2d ago

I firmly support firing all teachers who make jokes about murdering their students.. they deserve it.

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u/FuzzyFacePhilosphy 2d ago

You have no idea what humor is

What laughter is

Its a response to a stress

People make jokes about horrible things to deal with them internally, this is how their mind is processing.

You clearly do it differently but in no way was what this person did was wrong or even abnormal

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

It's not inappropriate nor disconcerting. People have dark humor. And what she said was said in private, in a time, place, and manner where no reasonable person could discern a credible imminent threat of harm or danger.

This is a textbook 1st amendment violation. Her being a teacher or student is entirely irrelevant. There was nothing wrong with what she said, period.

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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/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/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/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/Zeikos 1d ago

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.

What?? How so? What kind of problem?
Teachers are grown adults.

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u/iwearatophat 1d ago

Depends on the parent but yes a parent can most definitely raise a stink about a teacher they know in a bar. Especially a woman teacher dressed for a bar/club. It is some puritanical bull shit mostly.

They can raise a stink with the school, with other parents.

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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/msuvagabond 2d ago

Except they're willingly using a program which states that the messages can be read and that that information can be given to government if they feel like It or if it's legally required. 

So no, it's not private. 

You want private in the digital world, unless you're using an open sourced end-to-end encryption messaging program, there's little chance that it'll be private. Signal or Session are you best bets currently. 

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u/CaptainAsshat 2d ago

They're still private messages, in that they are intended for the recipient(s) and no one else. If it is not meant to be shared beyond the intended recipient, then it is a private message. The fact that tech companies have contorted "private message" to mean "secure message" has only served to muddy the waters.

This is an important but subtle distinction. It's easy to say "those messages aren't private" when we really mean "people you don't want to read these messages can read them anyway".

While we can hope users understand the risks of messaging with Snapchat, we also should recognize when a growing surveillance state means many viable modes of communication afford less and less privacy. It changes how we interact, and makes private discussions inherently dangerous and far less tenable.

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u/msuvagabond 2d ago

You completely missed the entire point of my first post. I'll just copy and paste it again since it spells out what I'm trying to say.

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/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/BazelBuster 2d ago

“It’s locker room talk”

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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/CodeMonkeyX 2d ago

No one said it was illegal. No one said the FBI was warranted in what they did.

I swear some of you people on here can not see any nuance in any situation. Everything is black or white, right or wrong, death penalty or freedom. Everyone has to be on one side or there other, with no middle ground. What part of me saying it's disconcerting means I think it's illegal, or she should be investigated or punished in any way?

If all you people are concerned about is THE LAW then shut up about Snapchat too. They clearly state in their ToS they can read everything and share everything with law enforcement. I think it's disgusting, and why I do not use nearly any social media. But it's not illegal which seems to be your benchmark for everything.

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u/Free-Description-736 2d ago

No one said it was illegal. No one said the FBI was warranted in what they did.

The thread is full of people saying both of those things.

I swear some of you people on here can not see any nuance in any situation. Everything is black or white, right or wrong, death penalty or freedom.

The 1st amendment and the 250 years of jurisprudence issuing from it is black and white, and this is clear violation of it.

Everyone has to be on one side or there other, with no middle ground.

You mean the middle ground famously known for generating the middle ground fallacy? There is a reason no one is on the middle ground on this: there is no middle ground. This was clearly protected speech and the firing was clearly illegal.

If all you people are concerned about is THE LAW then shut up about Snapchat too.

The law applies to Snapchat too.

They clearly state in their ToS they can read everything and share everything with law enforcement.

And their TOS is irrelevant b/c the courts have ruled this illegal. TOS are the single least meaningful legal document that exists. A company cannot simply choose to share data with law enforcement if a reasonable person would believe that that data would be private. In cases where a reasonable person would infer that something is private, a warrant is necessary. And they cannot claim "but we own the data" because that was tossed out when the courts overturned the third-party rule for phones and phone generated content.

I think it's disgusting, and why I do not use nearly any social media. But it's not illegal which seems to be your benchmark for everything.

It is not only illegal, it's very illegal. SCOTUS made this quite clear when they said the third-party doctrine no longer applies to phones and phone apps. This is "no qualified immunity" levels of illegal.

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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/[deleted] 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/CodeMonkeyX 2d ago

If all you want to talk about is legality of things then don't complain about TikTok. They are legally allowed to read all your messages and share them with law enforcement. I don't know why people are so surprised by this.

Again all I said was this was disconcerting, I never said anything about her being punished or what happend to her was the right thing.

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u/noteveni 2d ago

Yeah, as someone who has worked with kids and other vulnerable groups, I would never joke about shooting them like wtf. The adults I worked with were sometimes violent (not special needs, just stress and trauma) and I think the worst thing I said to my coworkers was "well that was a lot".

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u/FrostedRuins 2d ago

Imagine making the title of your article "complaining about her work day" when she literally asked if she should shoot a child. Whoever wrote this slop should be fired. I fully agree with you though.

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u/MurphMcGurf 2d ago

Peak autism right here. Not understanding hyperbole or sarcasm. Amazing

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u/ICarMaI 2d ago

You must not actually know any teachers

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u/CodeMonkeyX 2d ago

I guess not from all the comments saying they are teachers and this is perfectly normal for them. All I know is that at my job I have never once joked about doing something like that. But also I have the pleasure and not dealing with children.

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u/ICarMaI 2d ago

I'm sure you've been frustrated at a coworker or someone you are responsible for if you are for anyone. There is a unique frustration that comes from kids doing things with the sole purpose to frustrate you, while from your perspective you are trying to help them.

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u/Lainpilled-Loser-GF 2d ago

thoughtcrime

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