Streisand Effect

The Streisand Effect is when an attempt to suppress, censor, or delete information causes it to receive far more attention and spread far more widely than it ever would have on its own. The name comes from a 2003 incident in which Barbra Streisand sued a photographer to remove an aerial photograph of her Malibu home from a public database of California coastal properties. Before the lawsuit, the image had been downloaded six times. After news of the lawsuit broke, it was downloaded 420,000 times in a month.

What it means

The Streisand Effect is a reliable feature of internet culture: attempts to bury embarrassing information, criticism, or controversial content routinely backfire by generating news coverage of the very suppression attempt, which draws vastly more attention than the original content would have. It applies to corporate takedown demands, government censorship efforts, deplatforming actions, and cancel campaigns.

It carries a practical implication for censors: suppression often doesn't work, and can make things worse. For the censored party, it can be a gift — instant amplification that money couldn't buy.

How it works on Gab

Gab has benefited from the Streisand Effect repeatedly. Each time a major platform deplatforms or bans a high-profile account, news coverage of the deplatforming drives large numbers of new users to Gab to follow the person there. The same pattern applies to individual posts: content that gets removed from Twitter often gets reposted on Gab alongside screenshots of the removal, making it more viral than the original post would have been.

Related terms

The Streisand Effect is a practical argument against censorship and deplatforming. Cancel culture frequently triggers it. It's a real-world demonstration of the marketplace of ideas principle.