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.
That’s what annoys me the most with the nothing to hide crowd. You only have nothing to hide until they decide to go after something you have. I’m an LGBT person, I’m always one bad election away from having something to hide that could cost me my life. I see plenty of moralists who do tiny, widespread tactics to circumvent business taxes, and it’s so normalized here that they legit don’t realize they already have something to hide. Like yeah, realistically I wouldn’t expect the government to go after those people any time soon, but how the fuck are you literally breaking the law and literally every one of your customers know and you still think you have nothing to hide? I legit don’t understand those people.
Yeah I think our community has not forgotten how quickly the tide can turn on LGBTQ+ rights. In much of western Europe and the US it’s the T we’re defending, if we let the trans community be discriminated against then LG&B are quick to follow.