Snapchat’s automated system flagged a private DM to three contacts and triggered an FBI alert in under 60 minutes, ending her teaching career

  • 87Six@lemmy.zip
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    22 hours ago

    oh but I thought you had nothing to hide Sharon?

    I thought you didn’t care about using private messaging?

    I thought you said to me that Signal is used only for creeps and drug dealers that need to hide from the police?

    Well, thank god you’re not one of those, I guess…good for you Sharon

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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      22 hours ago

      Where does it say her name is Sharon? Why do you think she cares about private messaging?

          • Thorned_Rose@sh.itjust.works
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            6 hours ago

            I can’t stand the whole Karen thing and would agree with you on the sexism there. But in this case, the article uses “her” and so in the fun little pretend story, using a feminine name makes sense. The same as if the teacher were male you could say, “I thought you had nothing to hide Dave”

  • oyzmo@piefed.social
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    22 hours ago

    Private message - it isn’t private if it can get flagged 😅 … and seriously, think about everything you have ever said or written, imagine someone taking one of those private sentences out of context… To even think that was a real threat you had to act upon says tons about the country and system, the work- and school environment. Just sad really😢

    • Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world
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      16 hours ago

      Oh, I don’t have to imagine it. I once got suspended for two weeks after telling my bullies to “drop dead.” Apparently that’s a “threat.” The context of the phrase never came into play, no investigation into why I’d feel compelled to say something like that, because fuck the victims of bullying, right?

      The system has been pouncing on people for snippets of out-of-context phrases for decades. Unfortunately, they rarely catch the people who actually act out their violence.

  • frongt@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    she sent a private Snapchat message referencing shooting the child or the school

    Yeah talking about committing a school shooting is going to get you flagged.

    • Mr_WorldlyWiseman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      12 hours ago

      “should I shoot him?” is not a threat.

      Also, who made you the judge jury and executioner of Snapchat messages that get you fired from your job?

      That’s the AI’s job and I don’t want to see you stealing jobs from hard working AIs.

        • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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          22 hours ago

          I don’t think teachers should joke about shooting a student…

          Such behavior leads me to believe that this individual has a strong tendency to act on their emotions which is a very bad trait for someone working with children. If nothing else it shows that they have poor judgememt.

          • jtrek@startrek.website
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            15 hours ago

            They shouldn’t, but that’s irrelevant to “should an allegedly private message be preemptively shared with the government?”

            • HubertManne@piefed.social
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              15 hours ago

              in private conversations this happens. they are expressing how high the frustration was with what happened with people close enough to them to know it is not serious. things like this have been said on the phone and in bars for ages.

      • OwOarchist@pawb.social
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        1 day ago

        It usually (probably) isn’t. Snapchat (meta) is reading your private messages and then sending problematic ones to the government.

        If you don’t like that, then you should be using a messaging system that’s actually private. Which means, at a bare minimum, end-to-end encryption.

        • jtrek@startrek.website
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          14 hours ago

          Did they? Was this a genuine threat to student safety?

          And even if they did get it right, how much privacy is worth giving up? How much would you like your speech chilled?

          • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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            12 hours ago

            If a student teacher sent something like that to me I would almost certainly turn them for the safety of all involved. “Jokes” about violence is often times a sign of poor mental health.

            Just to be clear I don’t support mass surveillance. However, I also can’t condone violence or threats of violence especially against children.

            • jtrek@startrek.website
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              11 hours ago

              It almost certainly was not a sincere threat of violence. No one is asking you to condone threats of violence against children. You can narc on your friends all you like, but that’s a separate discussion.

    • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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      22 hours ago

      While I don’t support mass surveillance, this seems to be a case where it was in the right

      • snoons@piefed.ca
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        19 hours ago

        “I don’t support fascism, but in this case it’s a good thing.”

      • Hakuso@scribe.disroot.org
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        3 hours ago

        Use a Javascript blocker, as well.

        I have uBlock Origin and NoScript, together they disabled the ads and the demand to turn off your blocker.

        This is a good thing, though. Anyone so antagonistic to readers needs to be avoided.

  • FrostyPolicy@suppo.fi
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    1 day ago

    One reason why you need to use a proper privacy respecting E2EE messaging e.g. Signal.

    • HelloRoot@lemy.lol
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      12 hours ago

      Ah yes noted - if one wants to discuss schooting schoolchildren, they should do it on Signal. /s

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        9 hours ago

        That’s the point, she wasn’t doing any crime and was punished anyways. You need to protect yourself from tyranny with the proper tools.

    • I Cast Fist@programming.dev
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      24 hours ago

      Jamil has entered the chat. P2P with E2EE, so you only ever need some internet connection to stay in touch, no servers to be taken down.

      The only problem is that it’ll eat your phone’s battery like chrome eats RAM

  • HelloRoot@lemy.lol
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    1 day ago

    What I don’t get is how simply closing the laptop deletes anything.

    On every laptop and every OS I used closing the lid just makes it go to sleep and everything is the same when you open it back up again. Never was anything deleted.

    If somebody know a scenario where stuff would be deleted, please explain so that I can avoid it.

    • Midnight Wolf@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      You can set the lid-close trigger to do nothing, suspend, hibernate, or shut down. I’m assuming it was an unsaved document and the lid was set to shutdown on close.

      • Hakuso@scribe.disroot.org
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        1 day ago

        When my PC suspends it unmounts the sd card, which can cause data loss if I am working on something that is not saved to the internal SSD.

      • fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 day ago

        I wanna know what monster sets the lid close action to shut down.

        Like yeah it should be an option. But nobody should ever pick that option. And anyone who does should be shunned and socially isolated.

        • snoons@piefed.ca
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          20 hours ago

          Maybe that’s what it was; set it to disable autosave, i.e., save to the cloud so microsofts AI can scan in puke it up somewhere else.

      • taiyang@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        The real question is who has an unsaved lesson plan open on their laptop. Just fuckin’ improv style teaching method.

      • HelloRoot@lemy.lol
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        1 day ago

        ok… in my experience when shutting down windows it asks to save files and blocks the shutdown until then. Same for kde linux. No idea what mac does.

        • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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          9 hours ago

          Mac just silently saves a draft and brings it back up “unsaved” when you open the program again.

  • Possibly linux@lemmy.zip
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    22 hours ago

    While I don’t support mass surveillance I do think it is entirely inappropriate to “joke” about shooting someone.

  • artyom@piefed.social
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    1 day ago

    A student had walked up to her laptop and deleted her lesson plan mid-class. frustrated, she typed something like “should I shoot him” with a gun emoji.

    Yeah not getting any sympathy from me on that one…

        • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works
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          1 day ago

          Somebody report Bill Watterson for threatening children.

          Seriously, I’ve never met an involved parent (or any other child caretaker) who didn’t admit to moments of hyperbole like this, even if only internally. You’re just being a judgemental prick.

          • HubertManne@piefed.social
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            1 day ago

            ugh. I have met people like this before. I mentioned once to someone. You know when you are so angry you could literally kill em. They responded no never. no one should. Im like. Im talking for a brief second you are seeing red. still they deny. I just dropped it but like would not trust anything coming from that person to be truth.

          • artyom@piefed.social
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            1 day ago

            That’s not a threat, it’s a public comic. I’m not judging anyone, but you have to look at it from the POV of law enforcement. If they saw a comment like this and did nothing, and something actually happened, they’d be absolutely crucified for “ignoring red flags”.

            • HubertManne@piefed.social
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              1 day ago

              I think the thing here is why are they being contacted about a private message. If anything only those party to it should possibly report it. It stands as it does as a cautionary tale about using any service like this because private conversations should not be looked at in a public announcement kind of way.

              • artyom@piefed.social
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                1 day ago

                I think the thing here is why are they being contacted about a private message

                Because WhatsApp scans messages for when “imminent harm exists”.

                If anything only those party to it should possibly report it

                That’s not how Snapchat works.

                It stands as it does as a cautionary tale about using any service like this

                Absolutely.

                because private conversations should not be looked at in a public announcement kind of way

                It wasn’t a “public announcement”, it was forwarded to law enforcement.

                • HubertManne@piefed.social
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                  1 day ago

                  yeah by someone who should have never been privy to the convo. I meant that snapchat is treating it like its public discourse.

            • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works
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              1 day ago

              Did we just move the goalposts from ‘nobody can make jokes like this’ to ‘police have to investigate since they got a report’?

              • artyom@piefed.social
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                1 day ago

                We didn’t move anything, the statement I made was that they get no sympathy from me.

                • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works
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                  1 day ago

                  The implication there of course being that she’s in the wrong, hence why she doesn’t deserve any sympathy for having her life destroyed over a dark joke.

            • barooboodoo@lemmy.zip
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              24 hours ago

              Okay now I get it, at first I thought you were being serious but then I realized you were joking with the law enforcement getting crucified comment. You’d have to be literally brain dead to think something that stupid.

                • barooboodoo@lemmy.zip
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                  20 hours ago

                  Yeah I was being sarcastic haha. I’ve gotten into arguments with this guy before, one of the densest people on lemmy without a doubt.