There is something fundamentally fucked up in a country that arrests and puts in jail a 13 years old kid over a bad joke.

Arrested and strip-searched for a first offense? That's fucking ridiculous. I hope the lawsuit succeeds. It's the only peaceful tool we have to curb over-zealous law enforcement.

Before the morning was even over, the Tennessee eighth grader was under arrest. She was interrogated, strip-searched and spent the night in a jail cell, her mother says.

Earlier in the day, her friends had teased the teen about her tanned complexion and called her “Mexican,” even though she’s not. When a friend asked what she was planning for Thursday, she wrote: “on Thursday we kill all the Mexico’s.”

And strip-searched!

With the help of artificial intelligence, technology can dip into online conversations and immediately notify both school officials and law enforcement.

Not sure what's worse here: how the police overreacted or that the software immediately contacts law enforcement, without letting teachers (n.b.: they are the experts here, not the police) go through the positives first.

But oh, that would mean having to pay somebody, at least some extra hours, in addition to the no doubt expensive software. JFC.

Another school shooting avoided! Just kidding, we just tortured a child for fun.

My sense of humor is dry, dark, and absurdist. I’d go to jail every week for the sorts of things I joke about if I was a kid today. This is complete lunacy.

Example of an average joke on my part: speed up and run over that old lady crossing the street!

It makes my partner laugh. I laugh. We both know I don’t mean it. But a crappy AI tool wouldn’t understand that.

Not sure what’s worse here: how the police overreacted or that the software immediately contacts law enforcement, without letting teachers (n.b.: they are the professionals here, not the police) go through the positives first.

The idea behind the policy is to stop school shootings. If there were a legitimate threat of violence, you would likely want the police to be notified as soon as possible. The issue here is that the authorities are letting a piece of half-ass code (Read: AI) decide what is a legitimate threat and, worse still, acting on that determination without question.

They have literally sacrificed an essential freedom for some temporary, and probably illusory, security.

Something tells me that our type of jokes are on the way out bro. As you said, there's no room for nuance in this story, so I'm afraid we'll eventually all be listened in on 100% of the time until someone says something 'actionable'.
If you're not already on a multitude of lists by now, you're doing something wrong.

Authorities be like "aww shoot, not again."

In a country weary of school shootings, several states have taken a harder line on threats to schools. Among them is Tennessee, which passed a 2023 zero-tolerance law requiring any threat of mass violence against a school to be reported immediately to law enforcement.

The 13-year-old girl arrested in August 2023 had been texting with friends on a chat function tied to her school email at Fairview Middle School, which uses Gaggle to monitor students’ accounts.

1. how to teach kids to be a good corpo zombie. On corporate/school chat you don’t chat otherwise you are sent to camp/prison /fired
2. all of that monitoring for school shooting! What about banning gun that will be cheaper but yeah no ai software monitoring

Snapchat’s automated detection software picked up the comment, the company alerted the FBI, and the girl was arrested on school grounds within hours.

Someone should tell the kids about Signal.

As for monitoring on school computers, that seems OK to me if it's disclosed to the students and parents in advance. What's problematic is the responses, which seem much more focused on ass-covering than student welfare. I imagine most 13 year olds have made jokes about killing people once or twice and any adult with common sense would be able to tell they're jokes.

the policy is to stop school shootings

You should try Europe once. It's more fun than your 3rd world country.

This is an ass-covering response to school shootings, because some of the shooters have expressed their intent before.

A strip search obviously isn't necessary even if it's a credible threat; a metal detector wand and basic pat down is more than enough to ensure someone doesn't have a gun. This wasn't a credible threat though, and a chat with the school counselor would have been the right way to handle this.

This is frustrating. Obviously it's not okay to make jokes like that and I even think some sort of punishment might be okay, but strip searching and jailing her overnight? You aren't creating someone who will think before they speak, you're making someone who will be paranoid of all legal processes and never trust any government official ever again for anything because they got fucking STRIP SEARCHED AND DETAINED OVERNIGHT over a really shitty joke.

I just want to point out a lot of you actively support this if it helps curb “hate speech” or fascists or nazis or whatever. But what can be used against the guilty may be used against the innocent so it is best that we do not allow it at all. Either all speech is free or none of it is, there’s no other way.

Murica

Oh, I'm with you on that. I'm just pointing out the thought behind the policy, however flawed. I've been to Europe many years ago. I would love to be there now, except that as an American I would be rightly ostracized.

Man, if only there was a good way to stop school shooting

Alas, one can only dream

To me this is equivalent to dropping bombs on the Middle East and expecting not to create a lot more terrorists. If she didn’t want to go shooting before maybe she wants to now.