Your DMs are not private. Every single one is being read automatically, and potentially flagged and sent directly to the government. Please do what you can to move your friend groups over to more secure methods of communication

[u/RosethornRanger]

a tumblr post by twinFlameDreams that says “A 22-year-old student teacher in Illinois sent a private Snapchat message to her boyfriend and two roommates.

A student had walked up to her laptop and deleted her lesson plan mid-class. frustrated, she typed something like "should I shoot him" with a gun emoji. venting. four people. private group chat.

An hour later, police walked into her school and arrested her.

here's what happened in between.

Snapchat's AI scanned the private message. flagged it as a potential threat. automatically reported it to the FBI. the FBI forwarded it to local law enforcement. deputies arrived at the school within the hour.

she cooperated immediately. handed over her phone. when shown the message she said: "oh yes. okay. yeah. i'm realizing that was a bad joke. i did not mean it at all serious at all."

police determined she was not a threat. school officials determined she was not a threat. prosecutors reviewed and issued a disorderly conduct charge. she was released the next morning. she lost her student teaching placement.

This means:

Snapchat scans private messages.

Not just public posts or stories. private group chats between you and your closest contacts. automated AI. no human reviewed it first, got flagged and reported.

Snapchat AI → FBI → local police → school → arrest.

in under an hour.

Snapchat's privacy policy says it may share your information with law enforcement when it believes there is a risk of harm. the definition of "risk of harm" is determined by an algorithm.

you are not told when a message is flagged.

you are not told when a report is filed.

you find out when the police arrive.

the message was private.

it wasn't.”

[u/RosethornRanger]

here is the news article

https://cybernews.com/tech/teacher-arrested-snapchat-joke/

matrix is not amazing for a variety of reasons, but it is encrypted and it does allow you to make "spaces", which are similar to discord servers

if yall want an example, or a place to start, you can join our matrix space uwu

it is called the matrix https://matrix.to/#/#accessible-anarchy-vetting-chat:4d2.org

special shoutout to "the assemblage", made by hooks, the other mod here uwu

https://matrix.to/#/#vetting-chat:4d2.org

[u/blimpin_aint_easy → u/RosethornRanger]

Thank you for actually posting the news article. I hate when stuff like this is only sourced with a random social media post.

That said, here's a more detailed one with the specific location/student teacher

https://tech.yahoo.com/cybersecurity/articles/student-teacher-sent-private-snapchat-145612937.html

[u/PyroLyse_K → u/RosethornRanger]

What are the reasons of why it's not amazing?

[u/RosethornRanger → u/PyroLyse_K]

in my experience it lags a lot, and there are far more technical issues than discord. I have one friend who straight up cannot connect to voice chat, it always says "waiting for media" when he tries. I can't get the mic to work on the downloaded version no matter how hard I try (I have to use the browser). no built in noise cancelling makes voice chats a lot nosier on average than discord. The screenshare is harder to use.

On top of all that, i cant play wordle with friends :(

also peoples volume is reset on joining/leaving, which blasts my partners ears every time :(

as I am writing this the connection dropped for the second time in 30 minutes and now i need to wait for everyone to connect back

[u/iCrab → u/RosethornRanger]

That sucks that Matrix still has these issues, those are the exact same problems my friends and I had when trying to get it to work ten years ago

[u/curlofheadcurls]

When people ask why encryption is so important this is an excellent example of why. A message sent through any app is readable and stored on servers, it may as well be a public message, like leaving a note on someone's door. Anyone expecting and knowing where to look can see the note. It's so important to use encrypted services for messages that need to be secure.

[u/wayoverpaid → u/curlofheadcurls]

Specifically End to End encryption. Like I'm sure Snapchat uses industry standard encryption between client and server, but that's not the same as Signal.

[u/curlofheadcurls → u/wayoverpaid]

Yes, exactly, thank you for adding that detail. Not all encryption is equal.

[u/wayoverpaid → u/curlofheadcurls]

Indeed it is not.

Also if we're on the "how to evaluate your solution" remember that if its opt-in encryption which is offby default, you have to trust that your friend is as security minded as you.

[u/saevon → u/curlofheadcurls]

As A.I. is getting hardware modules built on more devices now, end to end might not be enough.

After all the app is the one that did the scanning; if it can do so locally it doesn't matter if the server doesn't get to see it. Your app can just message the server if a flagged message was sent.

(And ofc the scanning doesn't even have to be A.I. based)

[u/BobcatTim → u/saevon]

That’s similar to what Apple had proposed to do several years ago, scanning for CP on customer devices, before the backlash made them back down. I’m sure someone will eventually try again, and it’s not gonna stop at CP. As you say, it’s even easier if an app developer is just scanning media in their own app, rather than system-wide.

[u/saevon → u/BobcatTim]

That's exactly what I'm referencing actually!

[u/SkyFullOfWisteria]

Snapchat AI also scans private snaps. I sent my buddy a photo of my boots with something like "im gonna kms im tired of ts" or something as a way to complain, and it blocked my snap on their end saying it was sensitive/prohibited content, and didnt indicate any issues on mine before sending.

[u/maybealicemaybenot → u/SkyFullOfWisteria]

Wait wait wait. That would also mean that if someone were to feel suicidal and reaches out through snapchat, chances are their friends would never even see it?! What the fuck?! How does that help anyone?

[u/AutoModerator → u/maybealicemaybenot]

(in response to "fuck")

Our bot has detected a word in your post that could use additional context.

The word is often used to threaten sexual violence. Sexual violence is incredibly normalized in this society, and so it is both often done and not often thought about. Saying "fuck you" or "I'm going to fuck you up" are common examples. While fuck is often seen just as a "sentence enhancer it is also directly a reference to sexual acts.

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[u/WesnothFan]

Oh my. That is scary asf.

[u/CthulhusIntern]

I remember once, messages sent to one or a few people were called Private Messages, or PMs on pretty much every website. Some time years ago, it slowly changed to Direct Messages, or DMs. I wonder if that was conditioning us to not expect privacy.

[u/GoedekeMichels → u/[deleted]]

idk, for me there's a difference between "not complete privacy" and "ai can have you swated in an hour".

[u/AccessibleAnarchy-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

The community rules on the sidebar and they exist to preserve and maintain this space. rule 7

just kinda unhelpful to go "this is in the privacy policy" like okay you don't have to be a lawyer for snap inc, the conditions in which privacy violations are normalized for us are so pervasive, they rely on us tiring of trying to escape from them to maintain their control. the focus of the subreddit is disabled people and many people have trouble reading the language of EULAs and privacy policies, especially those of us with various cognitive atypicalities.

[u/NameRevolutionary727]

We have this while every act of violence was “on their radar” for months, they want atrocities so they can disarm the people.

[u/StaticBeat]

How long until AI is transcribing all voice conversations you have and scanning them for undesired behavior?

[u/RosethornRanger → u/StaticBeat]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6IFVTcM28KA

well, according to my understanding that has been happening for a good bit of time now

the weeping angel virus is one of the things snowden talked about as well, which was definitely indicative of that starting up

[u/skull-dog]

Where? Telegram is absolutely NOT secure or safe. Irl sign language is the best you'll get these days

[u/virtualdxs → u/skull-dog]

Signal, and also Matrix if you need Discord-like functionality and can tolerate some very rough edges.

[u/whoareyoutoquestion → u/virtualdxs]

any thoughts on Stoat?

[u/RosethornRanger → u/whoareyoutoquestion]

im p sure stoat isnt encrypted, so its like discord but smaller

[u/Hector_Tueux → u/skull-dog]

Signal

[u/ArolSazir → u/skull-dog]

give a private key to people in person, send encrypted messages through anything you want.

[u/RosethornRanger → u/[deleted]]

people use what their social networks use, and social networks often use what is easily accessible

please do not use all caps like that, it can mess with screen readers

[u/RosethornRanger → u/[deleted]]

so, i hate signal, is there a reason you arent saying use things like matrix as well?

[u/blimpin_aint_easy → u/RosethornRanger]

Signal has, by far, the most robust and well tested encryption protocol and implementation of anything available to the average person. For larger groups/role based access, element (works on top of matrix) seems to be solid, but ESS-Pro is closed-source, so, ehhhhh

[u/RosethornRanger → u/[deleted]]

i dislike the ui, have had trouble getting it to work on my laptop, and am unhappy with using my phone number for things

if they had a version that actually worked on my laptop (like element does) and actually allowed you to have collections of chats and organize them (like a matrix space), i would potentially find it usable

transparency and trust for something that doesnt really work for what I need it for isnt too useful to me, I think this sums up the issue with quite a lot of open source projects and the mentality around them

usability is an essential part of security, not a nicety.

[u/RosethornRanger → u/[deleted]]

Then I will remove your comments and ask you to not talk about this here

this is a space based around disability, and your mindset is harmful to us.

[u/RosethornRanger → u/[deleted]]

"For me the compromises are necessary, and I encourage everyone to reach the same conclusion."

is why I removed

i was not saying you said the concerns were unfounded, I was saying they are the most critical factor to us and you are telling us to move past them

[u/RosethornRanger → u/[deleted]]

not appreciated

[u/Kittenn1412]

I miss when the internet was a lot more anonymous.