What is the Streisand effect? Elon Musk found out after banning Twitter accounts
Elon Musk says he loves Barbara Streisand, and now he is learning about the Streisand effect after banning journalists from Twitter.
After claiming that he would be buying Twitter to create a platform that embraced free speech, the platform’s new CEO, Elon Musk, is again under fire after placing more restrictions on what can be posted on the site.
One of the accounts that received a suspension was ElonJet, run by Jack Sweeney, who developed a bot that could track the billionaire’s plane and post-real-time updates. Musk justified the removal of the account from Twitter, saying that no accounts will be allowed to post detailed information on an individual’s location, citing safety risks associated with the practice known as doxing.
Not only was ElonJet banned, but links to ElonJet’s Instagram account are not allowed to be posted or sent through direct messages. This practice is typically used to prevent the sharing of extreme, illegal, and disturbing content, like child pornography. Musk had criticized Twitter leaders who, during the 2020 election, used the exact mechanism to prevent the sharing of stories related to Hunter Biden’s laptop.
Journalists and other Twitter users have pushed back, saying that posting the coordinates of a private jet is not the same as broadcasting an individual’s home address and that the former example does not constitute “doxing.” After suspending several accounts, Musk polled the Twitter community and asked how long users thought those accounts should be suspended.
The Twitter CEO then found that he had included too many options and opted for a redo with just two choices: “Now” and “In 7 days.” Nearly sixty percent of the 3.6 million votes chose option 1, “Now,” and some accounts were reinstated.
Just before launching the poll, Musk tweeted, “I love Barbara Streisand lol,” which was slapped with a Twitter community clarification that said the billionaire was “alluding to comparisons” between “Twitter banning accounts to the Streisand Effect.”
What is the Streisand effect?
In the early 2000s, Barbara Streisand came under fire after she tried to suppress a photo of her home that the California Coastal Records Project had taken and posted online. However, in doing so, more people learned about the photo’s existence, and thousands downloaded it. So, essentially, the Streisand effect refers to a situation where an individual or organization tries to hide or censor information, and in doing so, greater attention is called to said information.
Some say that Musk’s move to ban ElonJet called more attention to the account and that all the information to track Musk’s jet is public information. While the account was banned on Twitter, Jack Sweeney’s bot remains active on other social media platforms, including Instagram, not to mention that the ban earned the young programer many new followers, meaning that overall, more people are tracking Musk than ever before.