Increased awareness of something after suppression efforts
This article is about an unintended consequence of attempting to suppress information. For theAtlanta episode, seeThe Streisand Effect (Atlanta).
The original image of Barbra Streisand's cliff-top residence inMalibu, California, which she attempted to suppress in 2003
TheStreisand effect describes a situation where an attempt to hide, remove, orcensor information results in theunintended consequence of the effort instead increasing public awareness of the information.
The term was coined in 2005 byMike Masnick afterBarbra Streisand attempted to suppress the publication of a photograph byKenneth Adelman showing her clifftop residence inMalibu, taken to documentcoastal erosion in California. Her efforts inadvertently drew widespread attention to the previously obscure photograph.
In 2003, the American singer and actressBarbra Streisand sued the photographer, Kenneth Adelman, and Pictopia.com for US$50 million forviolation of privacy.[4][5][6] The lawsuit sought to remove "Image 3850", an aerial photograph in which Streisand's mansion was visible, from the publicly availableCalifornia Coastal Records Project of 12,000 California coastline photographs. As the project's goal was to documentcoastal erosion to influence government policymakers, privacy concerns of homeowners were deemed to be of minor or no importance.[7][8][9][10][11]
The lawsuit was dismissed and Streisand was ordered to pay Adelman's $177,000 legalattorney fees.[4][12][13][14][15] "Image 3850" had beendownloaded only six times prior to Streisand's lawsuit, two of those being by Streisand's attorneys;[16] public awareness of the case led to more than 420,000 people visiting the site over the following month.[17]
Two years later, Masnick coined the name when writing about Marco Beach Ocean Resort's takedown notice to urinal.net (a site dedicated to photographs ofurinals) over its use of the resort's name.[18][19]
How long is it going to take before lawyers realize that the simple act of trying to repress something they don't like online is likely to make it so that something that most people would never, ever see (like a photo of a urinal in some random beach resort) is now seen by many more people? Let's call it the Streisand Effect.
— Mike Masnick, "Since When Is It Illegal To Just Mention A Trademark Online?",Techdirt (January 5, 2005)[20]
Streisand's perspective
In her 2023 autobiographyMy Name Is Barbra, Streisand, citing security problems with intruders, wrote:[21]
My issue was never with the photo ... it was only about the use of my name attached to the photo. I felt I was standing up for a principle, but in retrospect, it was a mistake. I also assumed that my lawyer had done exactly as I wished and simply asked to take my name off the photo.
According toVanity Fair, "she... didn't want her name to be publicized with [the photo], for security reasons."[22] Since the controversy, Streisand has published numerous detailed photos of the property on social media and in her 2010 book,My Passion For Design.[4]
Mechanism
Attempts to suppress information are often made throughcease-and-desist letters, but instead of being suppressed, the information sometimes receives extensive publicity, becoming viral over theInternet or being distributed onfile-sharing networks.[7][23] Seeking or obtaining aninjunction to prohibit something from beingpublished or to remove something that is already published can lead to increasedpublicity of the published work.[citation needed]
The Streisand effect has been described as an example ofpsychological reactance, wherein once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, they are significantly more motivated to acquire and spread it.[24]
The Streisand effect has been observed in relation to theright to be forgotten, the right in some jurisdictions to have private information about a person removed from internet searches and other directories under some circumstances. Alitigant attempting to remove information from search engines risks the litigation itself being reported in the news.[25][26][27][28][29]
The phenomenon has been described by the Chinese proverb, "(when one) attempts to cover (the truth), (it) becomes more conspicuous" (欲蓋彌彰,pinyin:Yù gài mí zhāng).[30]
When the French intelligence agencyDCRI tried to delete Wikipedia's article about themilitary radio station of Pierre-sur-Haute, much of which came from a documentary made with the cooperation of theFrench Air Force and freely available on-line,[31][32] the article became the French Wikipedia's most-viewed page.
In October 2020, theNew York Post publishedemails from a laptop owned byHunter Biden, the son of then Democratic presidential nomineeJoe Biden, detailing an alleged corruption scheme.[35] After internal discussion that debated whether the story may have originated fromRussian misinformation and propaganda,Twitter blocked the story from their platform and locked the accounts of those who shared a link to the article, including theNew York Post's own Twitter account, and White House Press SecretaryKayleigh McEnany, among others.[36] Researchers atMIT cited the increase of 5,500 shares every 15 minutes to about 10,000 shares shortly after Twitter censored the story, as evidence of the Streisand Effect nearly doubling the attention the story received.[37] Twitter removed the ban the following day.
A study found thatbanned books in the United States grew in circulation by 12%, on average, compared with comparable nonbanned titles after the ban.[40]
In April 2007, a group of companies that usedAdvanced Access Content System (AACS) encryption issued cease-and-desist letters demanding that the system's 128-bit (16-byte) numerical key (represented inhexadecimal as09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0) be removed from several high-profile websites, includingDigg. With the numerical key and some software, it was possible to decrypt the video content onHD DVDs. This led to the key's proliferation across other sites and chat rooms in various formats, with one commentator describing it as having become "the most famous number on the Internet".[41] Within a month, the key had been reprinted on over 280,000 pages, printed on T-shirts and tattoos, published as a book, and appeared onYouTube in a song played over 800,000 times.[42]
In September 2009, multi-national oil companyTrafigura obtained in a British court asuper-injunction to preventThe Guardian newspaper from reporting on an internal Trafigura investigation into the2006 Ivory Coast toxic waste dump scandal. A super-injunction prevents reporting on even the existence of the injunction. Usingparliamentary privilege, Labour MPPaul Farrelly referred to the super-injunction in a parliamentary question and on October 12, 2009,The Guardian reported that it had been gagged from reporting on the parliamentary question, in violation of theBill of Rights 1689.[43][44][45] Blogger Richard Wilson correctly identified the blocked question as referring to the Trafigura waste dump scandal, after whichThe Spectator suggested the same. Not long after, Trafigura began trending on Twitter, helped along byStephen Fry's retweeting the story to his followers.[46] Twitter users soon tracked down all details of the case, and by October 16, the super-injunction had been lifted and the report published.[47]
On March 11, 2025, the bookCareless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism by Sarah Wynn-Williams was published. It details the author’s experiences working atFacebook (nowMeta) and explores the company’s internal culture, decision-making processes, and role in reshaping global events. Meta CEOMark Zuckerberg responded by seeking relief at the Emergency International Arbitral Tribunal, which enjoined Wynn-Williams "from making orally, in writing, or otherwise any disparaging, critical or otherwise detrimental comments to any person or entity concerning [Meta], its officers, directors, or employees".[48][49]Macmillan, the UK publisher, later issued a statement saying that it would ignore the ruling.[48] The book reached number one on theNew York Times bestseller list by 20 March 2025.[50] Meta described the book as "a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about [its] executives".[50]
On December 5, 2008, theInternet Watch Foundation (IWF)added theEnglish Wikipedia article about the 1976Scorpions albumVirgin Killer to a child pornography blacklist, considering the album's cover art "a potentially illegal indecent image of a child under the age of 18".[51] The article quickly became one of the most popular pages on the site,[54] and the publicity surrounding the IWF action resulted in the image being spread across other sites.[55] The IWF was later reported on theBBC News website to have said "IWF's overriding objective is to minimise the availability of indecent images of children on the Internet, however, on this occasion our efforts have had the opposite effect".[56] This effect was also noted by the IWF in its statement about the removal of the URL from the blacklist.[57][58]
By individuals
In May 2011,Premier League footballerRyan Giggs sued Twitter after a user revealed that Giggs was the subject of an anonymousprivacy injunction (informally referred to as a "super-injunction")[59] that prevented the publication of details regarding an alleged affair with model and formerBig Brother contestantImogen Thomas. A blogger for theForbes website observed that the British media, which were banned from breaking the terms of the injunction, had mocked the footballer for not understanding the effect.[60] Dan Sabbagh fromThe Guardian subsequently posted a graph detailing—without naming the player—the number of references to the player's name against time, showing a large spike following the news that the player was seeking legal action.[61]
In 2013, aBuzzFeed article showcasing photos from theSuper Bowl contained several photos ofBeyoncé making unflattering poses and faces, resulting in her publicist contacting BuzzFeed via email and requesting the removal of the images.[62] In response to the email, BuzzFeed republished the images, which subsequently became much more well-known across the internet.[63]
In December 2022, Twitter CEOElon Musk banned the Twitter account@elonjet, a bot that reported his private jet's movements based on public domain flight data,[64] citing concerns about his family's safety.[65] The ban drew further media coverage and public attention to Musk's comments on allowing free speech across the Twitter platform.[66][67] Musk received further criticism after banning several journalists who had referred to the "ElonJet" account or been critical of Musk in the past.[68]
^Canton, David (November 5, 2005)."Today's Business Law: Attempt to suppress can backfire".The London Free Press. Archived fromthe original on September 27, 2007. RetrievedJuly 21, 2007.The 'Streisand effect' is what happens when someone tries to suppress something and the opposite occurs. The act of suppressing it raises the profile, making it much more well known than it ever would have been.
^abCanton, David (November 5, 2005)."Today's Business Law: Attempt to suppress can backfire".The London Free Press. Archived fromthe original on September 27, 2007. RetrievedJuly 21, 2007.The 'Streisand effect' is what happens when someone tries to suppress something and the opposite occurs. The act of suppressing it raises the profile, making it much more well known than it ever would have been.
^Stone, Brad (May 3, 2007)."In Web Uproar, Antipiracy Code Spreads Wildly".The New York Times.Archived from the original on December 11, 2008.The ironic thing is, because they tried to quiet it down it's the most famous number on the Internet.
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