Streisand Effect
n. (from Barbara Streisand)
- The increase in popularity of an item due to interest driven by the publicized outrage over its existence.
A couple years ago, I jokingly coined the phrase “The Streisand Effect,” to describe an increasingly common phenomenon. … The name came from a story from a few years earlier, where Barbara Streisand got upset over a project that involved photos of the entire California shoreline, taken from a helicopter. Her complaint was that her seaside mansion was included among the photos. Of course, before she filed the lawsuit, almost no one knew that. —Mike Masnick, “Is Leveraging The Streisand Effect Illegal?”