The Streisand Effect
Overview
The Streisand effect is a social phenomenon in which attempts to suppress, censor, or remove information inadvertently draw more attention to it, causing it to spread further. The effort to hide the information is often perceived as heavy-handed or secretive, which arouses public curiosity, amplifies interest, and encourages wider dissemination.
The term originated from a 2003 incident involving the singer Barbra Streisand, who sued to have an aerial photograph of her Malibu home removed from a public website documenting coastal erosion. Before the lawsuit, the image had been downloaded a handful of times; afterwards, the publicity caused it to be viewed and shared hundreds of thousands of times. The name was coined by Mike Masnick of Techdirt in 2005.
Notes
- Scientology and internet critics (2008): the Church of Scientology attempted to suppress a leaked video of Tom Cruise discussing Scientology. The takedown efforts led to the video being mirrored and shared globally, and sparked the Anonymous protests.
- The Ryan Giggs super-injunction (2011): the footballer obtained a legal injunction to stop the press from reporting on an alleged affair. The secrecy led to widespread discussion on Twitter, where users openly named him, undermining the court order.
- The effect is a practical argument for free speech and against censorship as a tactic, independent of the principled one: suppression is often not merely wrong but counter-productive, because the act of suppressing is itself news.
- It is a heuristic, not a law. Most takedowns succeed quietly; the effect is named for the cases where the target was already of public interest and the attempt to hide it supplied the story.