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.


Shout-out to all the Americans still claiming that they are more democratic than whatever other country. I take great pleasure in seeing the shit hole your country is and is still becoming. ❤️
That’s a pretty weird thing to take pleasure in, right? Wouldn’t you want the whole world to snap out of it and become better/united?
I’m not offering an opinion on the matter, I’d just like to point out that taking pleasure in one does not exclude the ability to take pleasure in the other.
Fuck that kumbayah shit
Can that wait until after I get a bunker with a solid arcade in it?
It’s always been a shithole. The good part was the freedom, you used to be able to be exhasperated and complain to your friends. But we decided instead of improving society that some of us would rather give a bunch of facists cameras and microphones and turns out, those facists are the evil kind of facists, not this mythical “only here to protect us” kind.
Except for the slaves, which as you know, are explicitly allowed in the constitution.
Slavery is outlawed
Except for prisoners
Invent a bunch of laws targeting the lower class, those in poverty, and those with substance habits
Enforce the laws selectively against those with the least agency and socioeconomic means
Make incarceration so dangerous that prisoners feel the need to commit further crimes on the inside to survive
Game the system so that if you don’t want someone out, they don’t get out
Enjoy your slaves in an emancipated country
Sure, let’s whataboutism the discussion, love that.
I don’t know when it was but realising the American dream was garbage, and I don’t want to travel to the USA was strange.
It wasn’t like a big hit to the face, it was just a slow crumbling of the idea from media.
When you watched friends and saw people in these massive apartments, or huge mcmansions in other shows, it was always something to strive towards, now I actively dislike it. I would hate to live somewhere like that.
There are(were at least, who knows how much longer they will last) some incredible and beautiful places in America, but I also don’t want to risk my life flying there (and it isn’t the planes).
For me at least I feel like it was when the American dream turned from “anyone can do it with hard work and dedication” to “anyone can do it if they exploit others, get lucky, or come from money”.
The dream used to be “work hard and this will be yours” and it seems to have been turned to “work hard and dream about it someday, and maybe you can get close”. And it definitely changed over time. People often forget when the “American dream” came about it wasn’t “get a degree, and be a white collar worker for a chance” like it was with people my age. It was “go to work, wherever, with whatever skill set/background, contribute and you get a piece of the American apple pie”. Over decades though those goal posts have been shifted further and further.
Earning the American dream used to be a given for everyone if you worked hard and contributed, but over time it has devolved with a bunch of extra conditionals of “well that doesn’t count either” until we are left with “the dream exists, but only for a few who can actually get it.”
People these days are turning to betting, day trading, side hustles, and extreme budgeting to even be comfortable in some cases. That’s not how it used to be. You could work any job, minimum wage or not, and the benefits were supposed to be for everyone. That’s not the case anymore, and the American dream has faded along with it
The freedom was always kind of dicey. Sedition act of 1798, for example.
Women also historically had a bad time of it. And the native peoples. Queer folks, too. Religious freedom is hit or miss.
It’s been pretty good for wealthy people, historically. They’ve been pretty free.
If freedom is the ability to complain, lots of countries with stringer regulations have that. They have it but better, even, because they have a much greater ability to stop it going away.
We have lost more people to gun violence in the last thirty years than every US soldier killed in every war. Death by firearm is now the number one killer of US children. I have personally lost several people I grew up with to gun violence.
Almost 50% of US males have a criminal conviction and minorities have a close to a 30% felony conviction rate. Millions of minority and poor families have been destroyed by the war on drugs. People regularly get convicted of crimes they didn’t do because they are manipulated into plea bargains with the threat of massive time behind bars. The US jails more people per capita than just about any other nation.
The unemployment rate for those under thirty is around 40%. Most working class families are priced out of home ownership and going to get a higher education will often indebt you for decades. You are expected to constantly change careers or you will be quickly left behind with median position length of just under four years. Many Americans have up to ten or more jobs in their lifetime due to instability in our economy.
I raised my family for over twenty years with zero health insurance. Going to the hospital is a financially life ending event with bills easily reaching $10k + for even basic procedures unless it is just a few stitches. Medical bills account for 40% of bankruptcies and half a million people go bankrupt every year from medical debt.
I find it amazing propaganda can manipulate rubes so easily into hating each other. The wealthy have truly won.
Yeah, 100% agree. The wealthy also manipulate rubes into thinking that there is no viable alternative, that other countries (mainly China) are so bad and oppressive that the tubes believe they’d rather keep getting fucked than to follow in the footsteps of the Chinese. It’s so prevalent on this website and on Reddit that you’d see Americans claim they’re more free, and this comment was meant for them.
And liberals and leftists still support the narrative about Venezuela elections being unfair and that the US puppets should rule the country and turn it into a neoliberal hellhole. Including the Swedish Nobel price committee for empire advancement. They will never learn.
What the absolute fuck are you talking about you idiot
Lmao buddy what the fuck are you smoking?
A large fraction lemmy.ml literally cannot participate in a thread without bringing up western imperialism. Like, it could be /c/superbowl picture of an owl, and somehow it would devolve into that.
Yeah because western imperialism ruins everything.
It certainly ruined Venezuela, because liberals and leftists still believe the US is democratic and has the moral high ground to denigrate and interfere.
You do know that liberals are not leftists, right? And that no serious leftist thinks the US is democratic? I’d call myself left and I abhor the US
You do realize that Snapchat is a corporation that has nothing to do with the democracy, right? Your comment is more dumb than an American redneck
Oh honey, but it does. Real democracies have real privacy laws because you need the latter to maintain the former.
Everybody, wait till he learns abut Chat Control abs that the sane ghouls are lobbying for this kind of legislation worldwide. It’s not JUST America, it’s the underlying capitalist machinery that let’s them subjugate the masses everywhere.
We in America aren’t special.
You are unfortunately the country that has led the rest of the world down this evil path. You deserve to be especially shamed for it. Stop being such a bitch and own up to it.
That’s the problem though - corporations have too much power and are partly running the country, or at very least assisting political parties and governments. That’s not a sign of democracy
Snapchat had the ability to summon American law enforcement within a short timespan. Or is the law enforcement in question private?
Also, who was front and center at Trump’s inauguration, if not corporations?
In other words, stfu yank
Reading your other comments I can see you’re just a pathetic person incapable of intellectual discourse
You’re not even worthy of it. Go let trump destroy your country while crying about how enough ppl didn’t vote or whatever. Doomed to serfdom and deluded by your own hubris. Burn in hell.
“Hell”… lol… so you’re a religious psychopath too
Because I used a figure of speech? If you were to say “oh my god” then does that make you a religious fanatic too?
I don’t even live in America. You’re wasting your time with someone not even in the US. That’s how fucking stupid you are lmao
Yet you still felt like you needed to defend the US? Why?