Could you please stop posting unsubstantive comments and flamebait? You've unfortunately been doing it repeatedly. It's not what this site is for, and destroys what it is for.
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.
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.
You're absolutely right. I currently develop twonly, an open-source alternative to Snapchat, where I encountered exactly these kinds of problems, such as a passwordless recovery. I came up with the following solution, happy to hear feedback :)
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.
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 may be unpopular? But Signal > iMessage > WhatsApp, is my personal ranking. Usually it’s possible to get almost anyone on one of those, and while WhatsApp is far from perfect, it’s better than SMS or another totally unencrypted service.
As a certified Meta hater, I would love a better third option, if anyone knows of one, but WhatsApp has such strong network effects, and it seems like a decent way to moderately* improve the security posture of non-tech-savvy family.
*The thing where they store the encryption key with the backup is terrible, and can make the improvement essentially negligible in cases of govt subpoena or similar, but even so, using WhatsApp would still prevent stuff like this SnapChat story
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.
If a human did read it, it very likely was not someone who was a native English speaker making well below minimum wage of the area they are trying to contextualize.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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.
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 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?
Funny how justice works. When teacher rapes her student, system tries everything to cover it up. Police refuses to wrote report, media call it "relationship", victim is bullied to silence etc...
Next time we tell victims, just to write private snapchat message!
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 "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!
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.
I saw a very similar story on youtube. A young woman was in some trade school studying to be a hair dresser. She had a bad day and posted on snapchat something like "I'll shoot everyone" The same system mentioned here triggered and cops showed up to her school. The whole thing was totally blown out of proportion and she got suspended.
On one side, I agree with most comments here - end to end encryption is the only way to go, don't use snapchat, etc, etc.
On the other side, she did write about committing a school shooting. Its hard to infer comedy from a text chat you have no context on. If you pretend this info did not come from corporate snooping then I have nothing against the FBI investigating this.
People joke about a fire drills at work or their neighbour in the apartment building burning the toast and setting off the alarm. We don't equate that to people laughing about dozens of people burning to death (even if that's a possible reality of a fire) because to most of us it's not conceptualized like that.
This is a teacher in the US who would have had to sit through live shooting drills and never believed a live shooting would happen at her school (How much would you need to be paid to work somewhere where you seriously believed you had a 1 in 100 chance of being shot in the next 5 years, it wouldn't be a teachers salary for most of us).
I find it fascinating that some people have never themselves or known anyone else who, upon some person causing them serious loss of emotional well-being/time/work/money, joked about harming them in some way while venting to a friend or relative without any intention of doing so.
When someone has seriously harmed you in some fashion, it's pretty normal to fantasize about harming them back in some way (without intent to actually do so) as a coping mechanism.
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[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 5.0 ms ] threadAnyway, looking forward to see EU version of this thank to chat control:( :(
https://twonly.eu/ https://github.com/twonlyapp/twonly-app
If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
https://www.fire.org/cases/florida-international-university-...
https://twonly.eu/en/blog/2026-passwordless-backup.html
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)
As a certified Meta hater, I would love a better third option, if anyone knows of one, but WhatsApp has such strong network effects, and it seems like a decent way to moderately* improve the security posture of non-tech-savvy family.
*The thing where they store the encryption key with the backup is terrible, and can make the improvement essentially negligible in cases of govt subpoena or similar, but even so, using WhatsApp would still prevent stuff like this SnapChat story
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.
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 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.
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
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 must be exactly what those screamers are envisioning...
Next time we tell victims, just to write private snapchat message!
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!
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
God that's horrible.
On the other side, she did write about committing a school shooting. Its hard to infer comedy from a text chat you have no context on. If you pretend this info did not come from corporate snooping then I have nothing against the FBI investigating this.
This is a teacher in the US who would have had to sit through live shooting drills and never believed a live shooting would happen at her school (How much would you need to be paid to work somewhere where you seriously believed you had a 1 in 100 chance of being shot in the next 5 years, it wouldn't be a teachers salary for most of us).
When someone has seriously harmed you in some fashion, it's pretty normal to fantasize about harming them back in some way (without intent to actually do so) as a coping mechanism.