The private messaging app Sidechat exploded following the arrest of a Palestinian activist who helped lead campus protests at Columbia University.
Featured Video
Sidechat, an anonymous messaging app popular with college students that requires a university email address, has previously been used to coordinate protests at several American university campuses.
It has also faced criticism for allowing hate to flourish among student bodies.
Thanks to the app’s anonymity, users speak far more freely than they would otherwise. That has been particularly true in the Columbia chapter of Sidechat, which has over 2,000 users.
Messages in recent days wish death on the unborn child of detained ex-student Mahmoud Khalil, call on pro-Palestine protesters to take a bullet in Gaza, and deem students fascist for not picking a side.
Following the 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel, Columbia became the center of college outrage against Israel’s subsequent invasion. While protests raged across the country, media attention focused on the New York City Ivy League school.
Alongside protests and sit-ins, students held vigils mourning those killed, with pro-Palestinian groups demanding Columbia divest from companies linked to Israeli actions. In response to the outpouring of support, Jewish students reported feeling unsafe at the school, flagging chants against Israel and support for Gaza as dangerous antisemitic language.
On Friday, the Trump administration announced that it would pull $400 million in federal grants and contracts from the university, accusing the school of refusing to quash antisemitism on campus.
Then, on Saturday, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate student who left the school in December, at his university-owned apartment in Manhattan.
During the arrest, ICE agents informed Khalil that his green card status was being revoked.
According to Khalil’s lawyer, Amy Greer, ICE agents also threatened to arrest Khalil’s wife, an American citizen who is eight months pregnant.
On Monday, the White House released a statement addressing the incident, saying that ICE “proudly apprehended and detained Mahmoud Khalil.”
The post warned that this is “the first arrest of many to come.”
Sidechat exploded in morbid glee and righteous anger, students lobbing insults and slurs at one another.
In a screenshot from the platform that went viral on X, students wrote they hoped the stress of the arrest on Khalil’s wife would cause his unborn baby to die.
The Daily Dot has since gained access to the social media app, where similar furious thoughts are constantly being fired off.
On the app, the discourse was divided, with some students bemoaning the arrest and upvoting posts that sympathized with Khalil’s struggle.
One, which has over 100 upvotes, read, “sick people. Mahmoud was chosen as trump’s sacrificial lamb to scare everyone else into obedience.”
A Truth Social post from President Donald Trump referred to Khalil as “a Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University,” warning that more arrests were coming.
“If you support terrorism,” Trump continued, “including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here.”
Some students, agreeing with Trump’s post, claimed Khalil had ties to Hamas and that he told fellow students that “zionists don’t deserve to live.”
Students fired back against that.
“Gaza is literally a terror Hamlet governed by an Islamofascist genocidal order,” one wrote, “Our peers have become brownshirts in ignorance.”
Another complained that they want “every single fucking person who protests at those campuses to go to Gaza and try to protest like that. You would be shot and killed.”
Others fired insults off freely. One student said, amid the chaos, “I just want to go to school.” Another replied, “Fascist fuck.”
Flippantly responding to calls to condemn Hamas, one person responded, “I will never condemn Hamas. Suck my dick.”
As rumors swirled that Columbia assisted ICE in its arrest, referencing newly installed security checks for students, one user asked, “is there really ICE priority lane at the gates?”
Since the arrest, Columbia has doubled down on security measures. It closed off certain entrances to the campus, with long lines to enter the campus. The university, however, has also instructed students to contact its public safety team if ICE agents are spotted on campus.
Cruel speculation continued.
One student wondered what Khalil’s wife would do after he is potentially deported. They posted, “I feel so bad for the mother. Does she leave the US or have the baby grow up without its father?”
The student then posted a poll with three options reading: “Leave the US;” “Baby doesn’t know dad;” and “Smuggle him back in.”
Two days after Khalil’s arrest, a federal judge ordered the Trump administration not to deport the Palestinian activist.
Sidechat also has separate communities with the university that students can join based on their identity or extracurriculars.
In an LGBTQIA+ chatroom, one person openly praised Hamas, writing, “We love Hamas god bless the axis of resistance in their struggle against colonialism.”
On a chatroom for Jewish students, the opposite sentiment reigned, “Some people on this app are way too far up Hamas ass.”
Agreeing in response, a student wrote, “This is what happens when you allow rampant…propagandists to propagate within academia.”
As protests and the arrests engulfed the campus and discourse on the app raged, some people just wanted out.
Showing a screenshot of Brown University’s transfer application calendar, one user wrote, “just feel the need to put this out here for any freshman – it’s too late for sophomores but get out while you still can.”
Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.