The Streisand Effect

In 2003, Barbra Streisand tried to suppress photos of her palatial house in Malibu, California, which appeared in a collection of photos documenting coastal erosion.  Prior to her filing the lawsuit against the photographer, the image had been accessed only six times (two of those times by her lawyers); after news of the suit broke, the image was viewed 420,000 times in one month.  Two years later, Mike Masnick of Techdirt coined the term “The Streisand Effect” to describe the phenomenon wherein attempts to censor information succeed only in making it more widely known.  The Effect has resulted in some pretty spectacular pratfalls since Streisand’s original one (some notable examples are listed in the Wikipedia article I linked above), but today I’d like to call your attention to two in the making.

The first case is that of Olaf Tyaransen, the Irish journalist who raped the late Laura Lee; Brooke Magnanti told the story in an essay back in February, shortly after Laura’s death.  The essay was published on Medium, but mirrored on this blog; so when Medium displayed its supple spine in the face of empty threats from Tyaransen’s lawyers, the article outing Tyaransen as a rapist didn’t go away.  Now, up until two weeks ago, Irish newspapers were afraid to report on the story because they didn’t want to risk an expensive defamation suit; however, either Tyaransen or his lawyers or both were apparently drunk on the few successes they had threatening Irishwomen to get them to remove their retweets of Brooke’s tweets on the subject, so they stupidly wrote to Twitter demanding Brooke’s tweets be removed:

…yesterday I was contacted by Twitter’s legal team, asking me to remove tweets which they felt contravened “Irish law”…Twitter is based in the US and so am I.  Olaf has never served me with a suit (though he has done to several people, all in Ireland, for RTing my tweets).  The Irish law in question, defamation, is not relevant to either me or Twitter being as we’re in the States…I dashed back a quick note assuring them the guy who writes grumpy letters to jerkoffs for me would be in touch.  I haven’t actually written to said lawyer since the last time some thin-skinned lick of shite tried to wave a baseless libel threat at me, back in September or so, but he’s good at this stuff…I’m pretty much committed to…paying someone to explain to Twitter what they should already know… that as a platform which has long defended the free speech rights of all kinds of deplorables worldwide, bowing down to a baseless threat in a jurisdiction whose judgements — should any come into existence — are not enforceable here, is (to use the legal term) “fucking nonsense.”  I’ve started a GoFundMe to offset my legal fees, if you’re at all inclined to bung a few quid my way…

Of course, the threat itself is newsworthy, which means Irish papers can now safely call attention to the rape without any risk of a defamation suit, simply by reporting on Olaf’s attempt to censor the accusation itself:

Twitter has warned an American author that it may need to “take action” over tweets containing allegations about the Hot Press writer Olaf Tyaransen.  The social network intervened after being sent legal correspondence warning that eight tweets by Brooke Magnanti…could be in breach of Irish defamation legislation…One of the tweets carried a link to an article by Magnanti that included allegations against Tyaransen…

It’s a classic Streisand Effect case, and here’s hoping that Olaf’s efforts continue until nobody in the entire English-speaking world is unfamiliar with his awfulness.  But he’s not the only vile Irish person currently involved in counterproductive efforts to censor the truth about what a piece of shit he is; prohibitionist Rachel Moran is doing much the same thing.  Last Tuesday, Moran’s lawyers threatened Gaye Dalton, who four years ago swore an affidavit that Moran’s story (as told in a book and countless speaking engagements sponsored by the pro-slave-labor organization Ruhama) is nothing but a pack of lies.  Naturally, Gaye tweeted about the letter and included this image (notice the absurd “strictly private and confidential” at the top, a dodge the deeply stupid believe will keep their victims from doing what Gaye did and telling others about the threat).  Here’s her response, demonstrating the same courage she displayed by swearing out an affidavit against the nuns’ pet fabulist in the first place.  In the past, simply saying “she’s a whore!” about a woman who accuses another of wrongdoing was basically enough to shut her down in the public eye, and perhaps Irish people who enjoy hurting sex workers should’ve just relied on that.  But since they haven’t, here’s to the Streisand Effect and the egg it’s liable to splash all over the faces of those who ignore its power.