Streisand effect
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The Streisand effect is an
unintended consequence In the social sciences, unintended consequences (sometimes unanticipated consequences or unforeseen consequences, more colloquially called knock-on effects) are outcomes of a purposeful action that are not intended or foreseen. The term was po ...
of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead increases public awareness of the information. The term was coined in 2005 by
Mike Masnick Michael Masnick (born December 8, 1974) is an American editor and entrepreneur. He is the CEO and founder of Techdirt, a weblog. He coined the term "Streisand effect" on the Techdirt blog in January 2005 and was interviewed about it three years ...
after
Barbra Streisand Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand ( ; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, songwriter, producer, and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success across multiple fields of entertainment, being the ...
attempted to suppress the publication of a photograph showing her clifftop residence in Malibu, taken to document
coastal erosion Coastal erosion is the loss or displacement of land, or the long-term removal of sediment and rocks along the coastline due to the action of Wind wave, waves, Ocean current, currents, tides, wind-driven water, waterborne ice, or other impacts ...
in California, inadvertently drawing far greater attention to the previously obscure photograph.


Mechanism

Attempts to suppress information are often made through cease-and-desist letters, but instead of being suppressed, the information sometimes receives extensive publicity, as well as the creation of media such as videos and spoof songs, which can be mirrored on the
Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...
or distributed on file-sharing networks. In addition, seeking or obtaining an
injunction An injunction is an equitable remedy in the form of a special court order compelling a party to do or refrain from doing certain acts. It was developed by the English courts of equity but its origins go back to Roman law and the equitable rem ...
to prohibit something from being
published Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...
or to remove something that is already published can lead to increased
publicity In marketing, publicity is the public visibility or awareness for any product, service, person or organization. It may also refer to the movement of information from its source to the general public, often (but not always) via the media. The sub ...
of the published work. The Streisand effect is an example of
psychological reactance In psychology, reactance is an unpleasant motivational reaction to offers, persons, rules, regulations, advice, recommendations, information, and messages that are perceived to threaten or eliminate specific behavioral freedoms. Reactance occurs ...
, wherein once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, they are significantly more motivated to acquire and spread it. The Streisand effect has been observed in relation to the right 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, as a litigant attempting to remove information from search engines risks the litigation itself being reported as valid, current news. The phenomenon is well-known in Chinese culture, expressed by the "''wishing to cover, more conspicuous''" (, zh, hp=Yù gài mí zhāng).


Origin

In 2003, the American singer and actress
Barbra Streisand Barbara Joan "Barbra" Streisand ( ; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, songwriter, producer, and director. With a career spanning over six decades, she has achieved success across multiple fields of entertainment, being the ...
sued the photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com for US$50 million for violation of privacy. The lawsuit sought to remove "Image 3850", an aerial photograph in which Streisand's mansion was visible, from the publicly available California Coastal Records Project of 12,000 California coastline photographs. As the project's goal was to document
coastal erosion Coastal erosion is the loss or displacement of land, or the long-term removal of sediment and rocks along the coastline due to the action of Wind wave, waves, Ocean current, currents, tides, wind-driven water, waterborne ice, or other impacts ...
to influence government policymakers, privacy concerns of homeowners were deemed to be of minor or no importance. The lawsuit was dismissed and Streisand was ordered to pay Adelman's $177,000 legal
attorney fees Attorney's fee is a chiefly United States term for compensation for legal services performed by an Lawyer, attorney (lawyer or law firm) for a client, in or out of court. Fees may be an hourly, flat-rate or contingent fee. Recent studies suggest ...
. "Image 3850" had been downloaded only six times prior to Streisand's lawsuit, two of those being by Streisand's attorneys; public awareness of the case led to more than 420,000 people visiting the site over the following month. Two years later,
Mike Masnick Michael Masnick (born December 8, 1974) is an American editor and entrepreneur. He is the CEO and founder of Techdirt, a weblog. He coined the term "Streisand effect" on the Techdirt blog in January 2005 and was interviewed about it three years ...
of
Techdirt Techdirt is an American Internet blog that reports on technology's legal challenges and related business and economic policy issues, in context of the digital revolution. It focuses on intellectual property, patent, information privacy and copyr ...
named the effect after the Streisand incident when writing about Marco Beach Ocean Resort's takedown notice to urinal.net (a site dedicated to photographs of
urinal A urinal (, ) is a sanitary plumbing fixture similar to a toilet, but for urination only. Urinals are often provided in men's public restrooms in Western countries (less so in Muslim countries). They are usually used in a standing position. ...
s) over its use of the resort's name.


Streisand's perspective

In her 2023 autobiography '' My Name Is Barbra'', Streisand, citing security problems with intruders, wrote:
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 to '' Vanity Fair'', "she... didn't want her name to be publicized with he photo for security reasons." Since the controversy, Streisand has published numerous detailed photos of the property on social media and in her 2010 book, ''My Passion For Design''.


Examples


In politics and government

The French intelligence agency DCRI's attempt to delete the
French Wikipedia The French Wikipedia () is the French-language edition of Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. This edition was started on 23 March 2001, two months after the official creation of Wikipedia. It has :fr:Special:Statistics, encyclopedia artic ...
article about the military radio station of Pierre-sur-Haute resulted in the restored article temporarily becoming the most-viewed page on the French Wikipedia. In October 2020, the ''
New York Post The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is an American Conservatism in the United States, conservative daily Tabloid (newspaper format), tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates three online sites: NYPost. ...
'' published emails from a laptop owned by Hunter Biden, the son of then Democratic presidential nominee
Joe Biden Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. (born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who was the 46th president of the United States from 2021 to 2025. A member of the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic Party, he served as the 47th vice p ...
, detailing an alleged corruption scheme. After internal discussion that debated whether the story may have originated from Russian misinformation and propaganda,
Twitter Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is an American microblogging and social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, image ...
blocked the story from their platform and locked the accounts of those who shared a link to the article, including the ''New York Post'' own Twitter account, and White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, among others. Researchers at
MIT The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of modern technology and sc ...
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. Twitter removed the ban the following day.


By businesses

In April 2007, a group of companies that used Advanced Access Content System (AACS) encryption issued cease-and-desist letters demanding that the system's 128-bit (16-byte) numerical key (represented in
hexadecimal Hexadecimal (also known as base-16 or simply hex) is a Numeral system#Positional systems in detail, positional numeral system that represents numbers using a radix (base) of sixteen. Unlike the decimal system representing numbers using ten symbo ...
as ) be removed from several high-profile websites, including
Digg Digg (stylized in lowercase as digg) is an American news aggregator with a curated front page, aiming to select articles specifically for the Internet audience such as science, trending political issues, and viral phenomenon, viral Internet iss ...
. With the numerical key and some software, it was possible to decrypt the video content on
HD DVD HD DVD (short for High Density Digital Versatile Disc) is an obsolete high-density optical disc format for storing data and playback of high-definition video.
s. 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". 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 on
YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...
in a song played over 800,000 times. In September 2009, multi-national oil company
Trafigura Trafigura Group Pte. Ltd. is a Singaporean-based multinational commodities company, with major regional hubs in Geneva, Houston, Montevideo and Mumbai, founded in 1993. The company trades in base metals and energy. It is the world's largest pri ...
obtained in a British court a super-injunction to prevent ''The Guardian'' newspaper from reporting on an internal Trafigura investigation into the 2006 Ivory Coast toxic waste dump scandal. A super-injunction prevents reporting on even the existence of the injunction. Using
parliamentary privilege Parliamentary privilege is a legal immunity enjoyed by members of certain legislatures, in which legislators are granted protection against civil or criminal liability for actions done or statements made in the course of their legislative duties ...
, Labour MP
Paul Farrelly Christopher Paul Farrelly (born 2 March 1962) is a British Labour Party politician, banker and journalist, who was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Newcastle-under-Lyme from 2001 to 2019. Early life Farrelly was born in Newcastle-under-Lyme, ...
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 the
Bill of Rights 1689 The Bill of Rights 1689 (sometimes known as the Bill of Rights 1688) is an Act of Parliament (United Kingdom), act of the Parliament of England that set out certain basic civil rights and changed the succession to the Monarchy of England, Engl ...
. Blogger Richard Wilson correctly identified the blocked question as referring to the Trafigura waste dump scandal, after which ''
The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British political and cultural news magazine. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving magazine in the world. ''The Spectator'' is politically conservative, and its principal subject a ...
'' suggested the same. Not long after, Trafigura began trending on Twitter, helped along by
Stephen Fry Sir Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director, narrator and writer. He came to prominence as a member of the comic act Fry and Laurie alongside Hugh Laurie, with the two starring in ''A Bit of ...
's retweeting the story to his followers. Twitter users soon tracked down all details of the case, and by October 16, the super-injunction had been lifted and the report published. On 11 March 2025, the book '' Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism'' by Sarah Wynn-Williams was published. It details the author’s experiences working at
Facebook Facebook is a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...
(now Meta) and explores the company’s internal culture, decision-making processes, and role in reshaping global events. Meta CEO
Mark Zuckerberg Mark Elliot Zuckerberg (; born May 14, 1984) is an American businessman who co-founded the social media service Facebook and its parent company Meta Platforms, of which he is the chairman, chief executive officer, and controlling sharehold ...
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
eta Eta ( ; uppercase , lowercase ; ''ē̂ta'' or ''ita'' ) is the seventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the close front unrounded vowel, . Originally denoting the voiceless glottal fricative, , in most dialects of Ancient Greek, it ...
its officers, directors, or employees". Macmillan, the UK publisher, later issued a statement saying that it would ignore the ruling. The book reached number one on the
New York Times bestseller list ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. John Bear, ''The #1 New York Times Best Seller: intriguing facts about the 484 books that have been #1 New York Times ...
by 20 March 2025. Meta described the book as "a mix of out-of-date and previously reported claims about the company and false accusations about tsexecutives".


By other organizations

In January 2008, the
Church of Scientology The Church of Scientology is a group of interconnected corporate entities and other organizations devoted to the practice, administration and dissemination of Scientology, which is variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religiou ...
's attempts to get Internet websites to delete a video of
Tom Cruise Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (born July 3, 1962) is an American actor and film producer. Regarded as a Cinema of the United States, Hollywood icon, he has received List of awards and nominations received by Tom Cruise, various accolades, includ ...
speaking about
Scientology Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by the American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It is variously defined as a scam, a Scientology as a business, business, a cult, or a religion. Hubbard initially develo ...
resulted in the creation of the protest movement
Project Chanology Project Chanology (also called Operation Chanology) was a protest movement against the practices of the Church of Scientology by members of Anonymous (group), Anonymous, a leaderless Internet-based group. "Chanology" is a portmanteau of "4chan" ...
. On December 5, 2008, the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) added the
English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is the primary English-language edition of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was created by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger on 15 January 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition. English Wikipedia is hosted alongside o ...
article about the 1976
Scorpions Scorpions are predatory arachnids of the Order (biology), order Scorpiones. They have eight legs and are easily recognized by a pair of Chela (organ), grasping pincers and a narrow, segmented tail, often carried in a characteristic forward cur ...
album '' Virgin 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". The article quickly became one of the most popular pages on the site, and the publicity surrounding the IWF action resulted in the image being spread across other sites. The IWF was later reported on the
BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...
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". This effect was also noted by the IWF in its statement about the removal of the URL from the blacklist.


By individuals

In May 2011,
Premier League The Premier League is a professional association football league in England and the highest level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football Lea ...
footballer Ryan Giggs sued Twitter after a user revealed that Giggs was the subject of an anonymous privacy injunction (informally referred to as a "super-injunction") that prevented the publication of details regarding an alleged affair with model and former '' Big Brother'' contestant Imogen Thomas. A blogger for the ''
Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...
'' 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. Dan Sabbagh from ''The 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. In 2013, a
BuzzFeed BuzzFeed, Inc. is an American Internet mass media, media, news and entertainment company with a focus on digital media. Based in New York City, BuzzFeed was founded in 2006 by Jonah Peretti and John Seward Johnson III, John S. Johnson III to ...
article showcasing photos from the
Super Bowl The Super Bowl is the annual History of the NFL championship, league championship game of the National Football League (NFL) of the United States. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966 NFL season, 1966 (with the excep ...
contained several photos of
Beyoncé Beyoncé Giselle Knowles-Carter ( ; born September 4, 1981) is an American singer, songwriter, actress, and businesswoman. With a career spanning over three decades, she has established herself as one of the most Cultural impact of Beyoncé, ...
making unflattering poses and faces, resulting in her publicist contacting BuzzFeed via email and requesting the removal of the images. In response to the email, BuzzFeed republished the images, which subsequently became much more well-known across the internet. In December 2022, Twitter CEO
Elon Musk Elon Reeve Musk ( ; born June 28, 1971) is a businessman. He is known for his leadership of Tesla, SpaceX, X (formerly Twitter), and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Musk has been considered the wealthiest person in th ...
banned the Twitter account @elonjet, a bot that reported his private jet's movements based on public domain flight data, citing concerns about his family's safety. The ban drew further media coverage and public attention to Musk's comments on allowing free speech across the Twitter platform. Musk received further criticism after banning several journalists who had referred to the "ElonJet" account or been critical of Musk in the past.


See also

* * * (popularly known as a "D notice") * * * * * * ("Cobra effect") * * * ''Royal Family'' (film) * *


References


External links


"The perils of the Streisand effect"
Parkinson, Justin.
BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...
, July 31, 2014. {{Barbra Streisand 2003 in Los Angeles County, California 2005 neologisms Adages Barbra Streisand Historical negationism Internet censorship in the United States Internet culture Malibu, California Privacy controversies