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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).
2tlevin
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 peopl... (read more)