This is completely wrong. I can get behind "think before you post" warnings where you have the chance to not send a threatening message and you only get reported if you do it anyway, but that's only for strangers.
Messages to a friend should be completely off limits and never shared unless they report it. Not even the police should be able access it unless they have a court order, and then the user has to be notified before it happens so they can respond and have the order revoked if it's illegal. Even if the charge is terrorism or child abuse.
How is that not considered libel or slander? That seems like a home-run case to sue the hell out of Snapchat for damaging her reputation for a joke made in a private conversation.
Thou shalt not vent to another. Thou shalt keep thine frustrations within, until thou hadst a mental breakdown and art permanently locked in a padded room.
Story aside, I'm most concerned with how closing a laptop "deleted" the lesson plan! It's hard to imagine how that could occur, and I've worked with a lot of people who aren't very technical.
Most likely a SaaS app that auto-saves, but didn’t save properly. Then closing the laptop caused a network disconnect, and the in-browser app did not recover gracefully while awaiting reconnect on wake-up and lost all unsaved data.
This would have been unbelievable to me before this year. Then I used PowerPoint via the browser and found this level of data loss is a regular occurrence.
I just spent an hour this morning talking with a friend who had an important saved draft email disappear after closing her laptop. Software is shit these days.
I've had cases where I'm writing some long text in certain apps on my phone, screen goes off, and when I turn it back on that text is gone. Could be something similar, though I can't imagine any desktop app being that crappy.
Edu saas is some of the worst crap I've ever had to deal with. It's one of those unfortunate cases of procurement not involving anyone who actually has to use it.
I could absolutely see a combo of a super short session timeout when the browser tab isn't active anymore combined with not actually saving drafts anywhere except in that session that gets deleted with prejudice.
When after an actual shooting, it its found that the shooter has, at some point in his life, made a post on social media that one could - if so inclined - interpret as an announcement of what he was about to do, people will go absolutely mad screaming: "Why did they not arrest him beforehand???!?!?!?!!!"
This must be exactly what those screamers are envisioning...
Same, this is like blogspam in the days of old that doesn't add anything to the original content and is just there to generate revenue for this site. The linked posts are better and per HN guidelines the toplink should probably be changed to one of those.
> 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.
I had to stop reading after that.
Everything about this is so fatiguing that I can’t choose what irks me the most:
- that it’s 2026 and Snapchat doesn’t E2E encrypt
- that Snapchat automatically dispatches to LE without a human reviewer or any checks
- that the story itself was automated
For those with more knowledge, what’s the best direct and group messaging platform for security nowadays? Is it signal?
I don’t use Snapchat but have been meaning to increase personal and family security (security from government in TFA’s case, which is a sad thing to say)
This strikes me as somewhat like the old stories about people being reported by photographic film processors to authorities for submitting negatives of their own naked or partially clothed little children. That is to say that it seems like an overreaction.
Why would a human review it? That only drives up costs for the company. Easier to use algorithms for everything and maybe pay the occasional fine when something goes seriously wrong and legal proceedings result.
Funny how justice works. When teacher rapes her student, system tries everything to cover it up. Police refuses to take report, media calls it "relationship", victim is bullied to silence etc...
Next time we will advice victims to write private snapchat message!
If you do not control the application that sends messages, the application can always do E2E, only to spy on the messages on the end devices and snitch if necessary... We need E2E + no "bonus features", and to ensure both hold you need to review the code.
Problem is those services aren't very user friendly. After all most users want to maintain history, recover their account if they forget their password, and other things not exactly compatible with highly secure communications.
We need a society-wide rude awakening to the terrible realities of these attractive nuisances pushed by the tech^wsurveillance industry. People get lured into using insecure garbage software because "works for me" and "everyone else is doing it".
When things like this happen, it puts the products' deliberate security vulnerabilities (and in this case, outright hostility) in stark relief. But then people think "what can I do about it" as they go right back to relying on these products.
It's certainly understandable how we all have to compromise and suffer insecure systems simply in order to get things done, especially interfacing with strangers. But for our most intimate communications and personal relationships, nobody should be compromising this way!
Is it possible to write a custom android keyboard that would let you use these compromised messenger apps by transmitting encrypted base64 text (plaintext to aes binary to base64 and back) and opaquely decrypting it? Could the app act like a translator app, but really provide encryption instead?
It's like an internship that people do when they are thinking about becoming teachers. Usually it is a university student who is just finishing up their coursework on teaching, and they spend ~8 weeks or so working under an existing, credentialed classroom teacher in a public school. It lets them practice working with real students under more experienced supervision.
They are not paid for it, and it's a required part of their training.
This is completely wrong. I can get behind "think before you post" warnings where you have the chance to not send a threatening message and you only get reported if you do it anyway, but that's only for strangers.
Messages to a friend should be completely off limits and never shared unless they report it. Not even the police should be able access it unless they have a court order, and then the user has to be notified before it happens so they can respond and have the order revoked if it's illegal. Even if the charge is terrorism or child abuse.
This is instant uninstall for me.
Anyway, looking forward to see EU version of this thank to chat control:( :(
I hate to break it to you, but this is not the first time snapchat has done this
Example:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68099669
and there were many more
Someone should have been charged and prosecuted for that, but not the arrested man.
Context and audience is everything, and he had no reason to expect fighter jets and security services.
How is that not considered libel or slander? That seems like a home-run case to sue the hell out of Snapchat for damaging her reputation for a joke made in a private conversation.
What part of this was lying about what she had said?
I think the entire thing is absurd but libel usually requires falsehoods to be published. Slander is similar. It isn't just "damaged reputation"
Thou shalt not vent to another. Thou shalt keep thine frustrations within, until thou hadst a mental breakdown and art permanently locked in a padded room.
i think the lesson is to just not do it on snapchat, rather than bottle it up until breakdown.
(face to face > signal > .... > snapchat)
Story aside, I'm most concerned with how closing a laptop "deleted" the lesson plan! It's hard to imagine how that could occur, and I've worked with a lot of people who aren't very technical.
Most likely a SaaS app that auto-saves, but didn’t save properly. Then closing the laptop caused a network disconnect, and the in-browser app did not recover gracefully while awaiting reconnect on wake-up and lost all unsaved data.
This would have been unbelievable to me before this year. Then I used PowerPoint via the browser and found this level of data loss is a regular occurrence.
I have these problems with Zed on my local fs. Science is hard.
I just spent an hour this morning talking with a friend who had an important saved draft email disappear after closing her laptop. Software is shit these days.
> Software is shit these days.
This is true, and we've trained end-users to pay for it, anyway.
I've had cases where I'm writing some long text in certain apps on my phone, screen goes off, and when I turn it back on that text is gone. Could be something similar, though I can't imagine any desktop app being that crappy.
Edu saas is some of the worst crap I've ever had to deal with. It's one of those unfortunate cases of procurement not involving anyone who actually has to use it.
I could absolutely see a combo of a super short session timeout when the browser tab isn't active anymore combined with not actually saving drafts anywhere except in that session that gets deleted with prejudice.
When after an actual shooting, it its found that the shooter has, at some point in his life, made a post on social media that one could - if so inclined - interpret as an announcement of what he was about to do, people will go absolutely mad screaming: "Why did they not arrest him beforehand???!?!?!?!!!"
This must be exactly what those screamers are envisioning...
Is this article written by AI? The story telling seems distinctly AI
100%
>Your Snapchat DMs feel like a locked apartment — but the building management reportedly kept a spare key.
There must be people who talk like that.
There must be people who think like that.
There must be people who will find nothing disturbing if read or hear such a sentence.
It's like their system prompts have a line that says, "Use analogies everywhere. Humans love analogies."
The linked sources exist, so who cares?
> She meant it as a frustrated joke. Snapchat’s algorithm didn’t get the humor.
While humans do write this way, it starts to get unbearable when you put it next to all the other AI patterns, including the very first sentence.
I closed the article after painfully completing the first paragraph.
Same, this is like blogspam in the days of old that doesn't add anything to the original content and is just there to generate revenue for this site. The linked posts are better and per HN guidelines the toplink should probably be changed to one of those.
Yup.
> The pipeline no one told you about
> 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.
I had to stop reading after that.
Everything about this is so fatiguing that I can’t choose what irks me the most: - that it’s 2026 and Snapchat doesn’t E2E encrypt - that Snapchat automatically dispatches to LE without a human reviewer or any checks - that the story itself was automated
For those with more knowledge, what’s the best direct and group messaging platform for security nowadays? Is it signal?
I don’t use Snapchat but have been meaning to increase personal and family security (security from government in TFA’s case, which is a sad thing to say)
It is Signal, yes
This strikes me as somewhat like the old stories about people being reported by photographic film processors to authorities for submitting negatives of their own naked or partially clothed little children. That is to say that it seems like an overreaction.
Google automated that years ago: https://www.businessinsider.com/google-reported-dad-police-p...
> "Snapchat’s algorithm didn’t get the humor."
Presumably, the actual text of the message was reviewed by a human? So the human(s) didn't get the humor either?
Why would a human review it? That only drives up costs for the company. Easier to use algorithms for everything and maybe pay the occasional fine when something goes seriously wrong and legal proceedings result.
That's a really generous presumption. The direction this industry is moving towards is to use AI to avoid human involvement.
At best, their algorithm flagged it, and a human rubber-stamped it.
I mean, the FBI guys that drove to the school probably read it.
Funny how justice works. When teacher rapes her student, system tries everything to cover it up. Police refuses to take report, media calls it "relationship", victim is bullied to silence etc...
Next time we will advice victims to write private snapchat message!
Venting reduces the likelihood of acting in aggressive feelings
This is why you use end to end encrypted communications.
If you do not control the application that sends messages, the application can always do E2E, only to spy on the messages on the end devices and snitch if necessary... We need E2E + no "bonus features", and to ensure both hold you need to review the code.
Switching to end to end encrypted chat is a technical solution to what is ultimately a social/political problem. It doesn’t work:
https://www.fire.org/cases/florida-international-university-...
Problem is those services aren't very user friendly. After all most users want to maintain history, recover their account if they forget their password, and other things not exactly compatible with highly secure communications.
We need a society-wide rude awakening to the terrible realities of these attractive nuisances pushed by the tech^wsurveillance industry. People get lured into using insecure garbage software because "works for me" and "everyone else is doing it".
When things like this happen, it puts the products' deliberate security vulnerabilities (and in this case, outright hostility) in stark relief. But then people think "what can I do about it" as they go right back to relying on these products.
It's certainly understandable how we all have to compromise and suffer insecure systems simply in order to get things done, especially interfacing with strangers. But for our most intimate communications and personal relationships, nobody should be compromising this way!
Use signal.
Is it possible to write a custom android keyboard that would let you use these compromised messenger apps by transmitting encrypted base64 text (plaintext to aes binary to base64 and back) and opaquely decrypting it? Could the app act like a translator app, but really provide encryption instead?
what would the benefit of this be over using something built for purpose like signal?
Dystopic
That's a quick way to lose all of their customers. Inappropriate messages offering the illusion of privacy was the entire point of Snapchat.
This is insane. Pedophiles run free but imaginary crimes are punished immediately. the world has gone mad.
It seems like authorities determined there was no threat, but she was fired anyway.
What's a "student teacher"?
It's like an internship that people do when they are thinking about becoming teachers. Usually it is a university student who is just finishing up their coursework on teaching, and they spend ~8 weeks or so working under an existing, credentialed classroom teacher in a public school. It lets them practice working with real students under more experienced supervision.
They are not paid for it, and it's a required part of their training.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_teacher
A student in an Education program doing their teaching experience at a school, before they graduate with a degree in Education.
> before they graduate with a degree in Education.
Before they are sacked and lose their career for venting to friends.
A student in a masters or bachelor’s program who teaches or assists a certified teacher.
They are in the process of getting their accreditation.