Controlling the Conversation: The Streisand Effect

Yesterday, I discussed the role of the web in the Iran Election, exploring how authoritarian governments are attempting to control the web, how citizens are fighting back, and why it might not matter as much as we think. Today I want to look at how businesses are attempting to control the conversation taking place online about their products and practices, beginning with a look at the unexpected repurcussions of employing a traditional business strategy in a web world.

The Streisand Effect

Who would have thought the star of Yentl would have something to teach us about social media and marketing? Yet her $50 million lawsuit against photographer Kenneth Adelman and Pictopia.com taught the world something about the internet community–besides the fact that we have too much time on our hands. Streisand sued in an effort to remove an aerial photo of her beach house from Adelman’s online collection of 12,000 coastline photos taken in participation with the California Coastal Records Project in an effort to document coastal erosion. Streisand’s ridiculous $50 million lawsuit created an internet sensation and generated interest–what sort of reptilian lair was she so desperate to hide–which resulted in 420,000 visitors to the site over the next month. Instead of going unvisited, unknown, lost in the morass of the internet, Streisand’s backlash prompted a tidal wave of traffic. So much for a private beach getaway. And the case was dismissed. For her trouble Streisand received the honour of having an internet phenomenon named after her: “The Streisand Effect,” where your efforts to withhold information exponentially increase the rate of its digital dissemination.

The Streisand Effect is also responsible for the most famous number on the internet. Two months after hackers broke the 32-digit code used for HD DVD copy protection, someone posted it on Digg.com, a use-generated news site, where it was promoted to the front page. Then the lawyers stepped in. Cease-and-desist letters besieged Digg headquarters and management decided to remove the number and explain the situation to its users, who saw it as a case of corporate bullying vs. free speech. After fighting a deluge of pages about the code added to its site by members for a day, Digg surrendered. Kevin Rose, Digg’s founder, wrote a post with the forbidden number in the title: “You’d rather see Digg go down fighting than bow down to a bigger company,” he wrote, “We hear you, and effective immediately we won’t delete stories or comments containing the code and will deal with whatever the consequences might be. If we lose, then what the hell, at least we died trying.” The threat of lawsuit failed, and by this point, instead of being one story on the front page, the code had consumed Digg and created a maelstrom of internet activity. In one example, Keith Burgon took up a guitar and a camera and recorded a music video where he belts out the numbers. It has logged over 525,000 views. So much for containing the number.

Yet companies continue to strong-arm bloggers and critics. I would never have heard of GoldmanSachs666, a website devoted to criticizing Goldman, if it wasn’t for the company’s efforts to bring down the site. Barclays, in a similar story, received for an emergency temporary injunction against The Guardian, a UK newspaper, to remove seven documents describing structured finance deals that move profits to low tax countries. Yet the documents were already available elsewhere online, including wikileaks, a website that exists solely to disseminate information. As of the injunction only 127 people had accessed the documents on Wikileaks, but Barclays reaction sparked peoples interest and caused a flood of traffic to Wikileaks and elsewhere. Bloggers picked up the story; traditional media carried it from there. The lesson: Information dissemination has never been easier and if you care enough to hide something, web users care enough to bring it out into the light. In the web world, the cease-and-desist letter has become a press release.

I will be back soon with a look at more ways in which companies are attempting to control information on the internet, particularly the use of what I’m calling “Green Noise”—paying posters to create positive spin for your products.