Sixty minutes. That’s how long it took for a private Snapchat message to travel from Kristen Volpe’s phone to the FBI to the deputies standing in her elementary school hallway. On January 29, 2025, the 22-year-old student teacher at John L. Hensey Elementary in Washington, Illinois, vented to her boyfriend and two roommates — three people total — after a student closed her laptop mid-class and wiped her lesson plan. She referenced shooting the student or the school. She meant it as a frustrated joke. Snapchat’s algorithm didn’t get the humor.
No student reported her. No parent. No coworker. The flag was entirely automated. Snapchat’s policy permits voluntary emergency disclosures to law enforcement — no warrant required — when the platform determines imminent harm exists. The algorithm makes that initial call. Think of it like your Ring doorbell deciding to call 911 on its own, except the doorbell is reading your text messages.
Who the fuck still uses Snapchat?
Ditch that shit.
I still use it with friends. Not because it’s private (it’s obviously not) and not because it’s good(it’s infested with ads) but because of the convenience of having the ability to send silly inconsequential videos and photos throughout the day without having to worry about that content consuming space on my device or having to go back and clean said content from my device. In that way I find it pretty convenient. That said, from a privacy standpoint it’s probably worse than most other options. Don’t use it with any expectations of privacy.