Hot take: the Streisand Effect might be entirely driven by survivorship bias. Probably happens all the time that people delete stuff and then the public never hears about it, but the rare exceptions are sufficiently ironic that they get a whole effect named after them!
I like how you think, but I don’t think it’s entirely driven by survivorship bias—experimental evidence shows that people are more motivated to access information when it’s suppressed than when it’s accessible (a phenomenon called psychological reactance).
Interesting. Yeah rather than “entirely driven” I guess I should say: it seems like the direct effects of suppressing information probably usually outweigh the second-order Streisand Effect, and the exceptions are more salient than the non-exceptions due to survivorship bias?
I think you’re headed in the right direction, yes: people can only experience psychological reactance when they are aware that information is being suppressed, and most information suppression is successful (in that the information is suppressed and the suppression attempt is covert). In the instances where the suppression attempt is overt, a number of factors determine whether the “Streisand Effect” occurs (the novelty/importance of the information, the number of people who notice the suppression attempt, the traits/values/interests/influence of the people that notice the suppression attempt, whether it’s a slow news day, etc.). I think survivorship bias is relevant to the extent that it leads people to overestimate how often the Streisand Effect occurs in response to attempts to suppress information. Does that sound about right to you?
I suspect this about many things, e.g. the advice in the US to never talk to the police. With the Streisand effect I’m less sure. Conflict sells. The areas in e.g. popular science I know the most about tend not to be the ones that are most established or important—they tend to be the ones that are controversial (group selection, deworming wars, arsenic biology).
Maybe we should distinguish between the “Weak Streisand Effect” (in some cases, the act of attempting to suppress information adds to the virality of a story) and the “Strong Streisand Effect” (attempting to suppress information increases the virality of a story in expectation). WSE seems definitely true, SSE seems pretty unlikely on average, though depends massively on the details.
Hot take: the Streisand Effect might be entirely driven by survivorship bias. Probably happens all the time that people delete stuff and then the public never hears about it, but the rare exceptions are sufficiently ironic that they get a whole effect named after them!
I like how you think, but I don’t think it’s entirely driven by survivorship bias—experimental evidence shows that people are more motivated to access information when it’s suppressed than when it’s accessible (a phenomenon called psychological reactance).
Interesting. Yeah rather than “entirely driven” I guess I should say: it seems like the direct effects of suppressing information probably usually outweigh the second-order Streisand Effect, and the exceptions are more salient than the non-exceptions due to survivorship bias?
I think you’re headed in the right direction, yes: people can only experience psychological reactance when they are aware that information is being suppressed, and most information suppression is successful (in that the information is suppressed and the suppression attempt is covert). In the instances where the suppression attempt is overt, a number of factors determine whether the “Streisand Effect” occurs (the novelty/importance of the information, the number of people who notice the suppression attempt, the traits/values/interests/influence of the people that notice the suppression attempt, whether it’s a slow news day, etc.). I think survivorship bias is relevant to the extent that it leads people to overestimate how often the Streisand Effect occurs in response to attempts to suppress information. Does that sound about right to you?
I suspect this about many things, e.g. the advice in the US to never talk to the police.
With the Streisand effect I’m less sure. Conflict sells. The areas in e.g. popular science I know the most about tend not to be the ones that are most established or important—they tend to be the ones that are controversial (group selection, deworming wars, arsenic biology).
Maybe we should distinguish between the “Weak Streisand Effect” (in some cases, the act of attempting to suppress information adds to the virality of a story) and the “Strong Streisand Effect” (attempting to suppress information increases the virality of a story in expectation). WSE seems definitely true, SSE seems pretty unlikely on average, though depends massively on the details.