Rendered at 19:47:52 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Cloudflare Workers.
tancop 57 minutes ago [-]
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.
throwa356262 1 hours ago [-]
This is instant uninstall for me.
Anyway, looking forward to see EU version of this thank to chat control :( :(
thehamkercat 1 hours ago [-]
I hate to break it to you, but this is not the first time snapchat has done this
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.
41 minutes ago [-]
smusamashah 1 hours ago [-]
Is this article written by AI? The story telling seems distinctly AI
snapcaster 1 hours ago [-]
100%
>Your Snapchat DMs feel like a locked apartment — but the building management reportedly kept a spare key.
bewareofscams 50 minutes ago [-]
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.
Spoom 47 minutes ago [-]
It's like their system prompts have a line that says, "Use analogies everywhere. Humans love analogies."
fg137 58 minutes ago [-]
> 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.
flatline 49 minutes ago [-]
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.
thekiptxt 52 minutes ago [-]
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
cwillu 56 minutes ago [-]
The linked sources exist, so who cares?
skygazer 25 minutes ago [-]
It may be turtles all the way down, but we don't want to need to visit each tier, wading through obvious slop engineered for engagement as we go. The sloppiness reveals the low effort machinery meant to sap our vital attention and time. It's probably best to build a growing resistance to it.
skeledrew 56 minutes ago [-]
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.
john_strinlai 49 minutes ago [-]
i think the lesson is to just not do it on snapchat, rather than bottle it up until breakdown.
(face to face > signal > .... > snapchat)
skeledrew 12 minutes ago [-]
There could be a Flock-like or Ring-like or some other device listening in on that face to face. And the phone running Signal or whatever might already be compromised by something Pegasus-like and sending whatever happens on it off to who knows where. That's the kind of world we now live in.
john_strinlai 9 minutes ago [-]
yes, and whichever god you believe in might be listening in and come down to personally smite you!
but there is significantly different chances of those events happening. there is a 100% chance snapchat reads all of your messages. a random student teacher being infected by pegasus-like spyware is ~= 0% chance. a flock camera in my living room is 0% chance.
freediddy 58 minutes ago [-]
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.
cheeze 48 minutes ago [-]
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"
delichon 17 minutes ago [-]
Turns out people have little sense of humor around shooting kids, go figure. It's about as safe to joke about as telling the stewardess about the bomb in your carry on. Just as personal tactical advice and not civil rights commentary, better to joke about scenarios where people have greater than zero tolerance.
john_strinlai 14 minutes ago [-]
the people the joke was sent to were not the reporters. in fact, no human reported it.
the tactical advice is that if you want to make such jokes, do so using a platform that doesn't scan your messages with ai and auto-report to the fbi
delichon 2 minutes ago [-]
That leaves out Snap, Meta, Google, TikTox, X, etc. They all have policies to hand over data without a warrant for posts classified as CSAM, terrorism, self-harm or threats of violence. They have law-enforcement portals and a 24/7 emergency-disclosure process. They are protected from resulting liability by the Stored Communications Act, 18 U.S.C. §§ 2702(b)(8). I wouldn't be surprised if their humor detectors are no more forgiving than SnapChat's.
zzril 55 minutes ago [-]
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...
callc 1 hours ago [-]
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)
teach 1 hours ago [-]
It is Signal, yes
metabagel 1 hours ago [-]
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.
Presumably, the actual text of the message was reviewed by a human? So the human(s) didn't get the humor either?
skeledrew 47 minutes ago [-]
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.
LocalH 49 minutes ago [-]
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.
maxerickson 44 minutes ago [-]
I mean, the FBI guys that drove to the school probably read it.
throw234259 46 minutes ago [-]
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!
teach 1 hours ago [-]
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.
computomatic 55 minutes ago [-]
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.
mckee_plus_plus 48 minutes ago [-]
I have these problems with Zed on my local fs. Science is hard.
cwillu 53 minutes ago [-]
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.
ChrisMarshallNY 49 minutes ago [-]
> Software is shit these days.
This is true, and we've trained end-users to pay for it, anyway.
monocasa 50 minutes ago [-]
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.
skeledrew 42 minutes ago [-]
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.
jwpapi 49 minutes ago [-]
Venting reduces the likelihood of acting in aggressive feelings
_zoltan_ 1 hours ago [-]
This is why you use end to end encrypted communications.
janalsncm 52 minutes ago [-]
Switching to end to end encrypted chat is a technical solution to what is ultimately a social/political problem. It doesn’t work:
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.
zzril 29 minutes ago [-]
It's called "Matrix".
skeledrew 51 minutes ago [-]
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.
root_axis 52 minutes ago [-]
Use signal.
36 minutes ago [-]
mindslight 44 minutes ago [-]
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", completely oblivious to the fact that party to every interaction is an uninvited guest.
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 "I wouldn't be that stupid" or "what can I even do about it" as they go right back to continue 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 when interfacing with strangers. But for our most intimate communications and personal relationships, we should insist on secure software!
gosub100 53 minutes ago [-]
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?
john_strinlai 41 minutes ago [-]
what would the benefit of this be over using something built for purpose like signal?
M95D 1 hours ago [-]
What's a "student teacher"?
teach 1 hours ago [-]
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.
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.
Anyway, looking forward to see EU version of this thank to chat control :( :(
Example:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-68099669
and there were many more
Context and audience is everything, and he had no reason to expect fighter jets and security services.
>Your Snapchat DMs feel like a locked apartment — but the building management reportedly kept a spare key.
There must be people who think like that.
There must be people who will find nothing disturbing if read or hear such a sentence.
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.
> 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
(face to face > signal > .... > snapchat)
but there is significantly different chances of those events happening. there is a 100% chance snapchat reads all of your messages. a random student teacher being infected by pegasus-like spyware is ~= 0% chance. a flock camera in my living room is 0% chance.
I think the entire thing is absurd but libel usually requires falsehoods to be published. Slander is similar. It isn't just "damaged reputation"
the tactical advice is that if you want to make such jokes, do so using a platform that doesn't scan your messages with ai and auto-report to the fbi
This must be exactly what those screamers are envisioning...
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)
Presumably, the actual text of the message was reviewed by a human? So the human(s) didn't get the humor either?
At best, their algorithm flagged it, and a human rubber-stamped it.
Next time we will advice victims to write private snapchat message!
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.
This is true, and we've trained end-users to pay for it, anyway.
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.
https://www.fire.org/cases/florida-international-university-...
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 "I wouldn't be that stupid" or "what can I even do about it" as they go right back to continue 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 when interfacing with strangers. But for our most intimate communications and personal relationships, we should insist on secure software!
They are not paid for it, and it's a required part of their training.
Before they are sacked and lose their career for venting to friends.