This is a list of notable incidents that have experienced a Streisand effect, an unintended consequence of attempts to hide, remove, or censor information, where the effort instead backfires by increasing public awareness of the information. This list includes only instances explicitly identified by the media or other sources as examples of the Streisand effect.
In politics and government
Argentina
In November 2024, an attempt led by Vice President Victoria Villarruel to ban certain books from schools for being "degrading and immoral" led to one such book, Cometierra, becoming a bestseller.
Australia In March 2022, incumbent Australian federal MP Tim Wilson, in what had previously been considered to be the safe seat of Goldstein, drew national attention to his independent challenger Zoe Daniel when he made legal objections to posting of campaign signs by volunteers on the fences of private residences. This also led to a significant increase in donations to the Daniel campaign.
In December 2024, Rachael Gunn, Australia's Olympic breakdancer, attempted to legally suppress a comedy musical about her performance. Her legal threats were worked into a revised version of the show, which then played to larger audiences.
Canada In December 2023, the Canadian Armed Forces at CFB Kingston sent a base-wide email addressing a sex worker advertising on base. The worker, who was essentially unknown to most soldiers at the time, became instantly recognizable as the email effectively advertised the woman and her services to the entire base. This situation was compounded after the story appeared in a number of national news outlets.
China A 2018 study of millions of individual responses of Chinese social media users found that sudden censorship of information by the Chinese government and its affiliates often led to mass backlashes, including newfound popularity of virtual private networks and the subsequent reviewing of entire topic lists on which censored subjects appear. Other researchers found that the backlash tended to result in permanent changes to political attitudes and behaviors.
In August 2020, it was reported that the Chinese government had blanked out parts of Baidu's mapping platform, and that this could be used to find a network of buildings bearing hallmarks of prisons and internment camps in Xinjiang.
On June 3, 2022, Chinese e-commerce livestreamer Li Jiaqi was interrupted for showing a tank-shaped ice cream cake in a livestream and failed to show up for the next scheduled show. This sudden suspension drew more attention to the sensitivity of the tank symbol on the eve of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre; the interruption paradoxically triggered widespread online discussion and searches regarding "June 4th", increasing awareness of the suppressed history.
In January 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic in China, the Jyllands-Posten newspaper received international attention when it published a cartoon depicting the Chinese flag with yellow virus-like figures instead of the usual yellow stars. The illustrator received numerous threats, and social media platforms were flooded by illustrations of the Danish flag that had been edited to included feces, texts like alle jeres familier døde ("all your families are dead") and similar mockery in what experts regarded as a coordinated action, much of it spread by newly started profiles that appeared to be automated. The Chinese embassy in Denmark demanded an official apology from Jyllands-Posten. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen refused to apologize on behalf of the Danish government, declaring that there is freedom of speech in Denmark. Other Danish newspapers, although some of them regarded the illustration as impolite, supported , noting that Danish newspapers operate under Danish law, not based on intimidation from a non-democratic country, and also pointed out that few would have seen the illustration if not for the actions of the Chinese embassy.
When Hong Kong's secretary for justice filed an injunction to bar the distribution of pro-democracy protest song Glory to Hong Kong with the intention to incite secession, sedition, or to violate the national anthem law, Senior Counsel Abraham Chan said the government's injunction application "would bring about an own goal" by amplifying that which it sought to prohibit. Chan cited "empirical evidence" that after the government announced that it would apply for a ban, "the level of engagement with the song increased".
When Liu Xiaobo was awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize for "his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China", the Chinese Communist Party censored the news domestically, while publicly denouncing the Nobel Prize internationally. Most Western democracies, however, publicly praised the award and attended the awards ceremony despite pressure from Chinese diplomats.
When tennis star Peng Shuai disappeared after accusing Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli of raping her, the Chinese Communist Party's censorship of her story and subsequent staged public appearances of Peng drew increased worldwide scrutiny to her whereabouts and safety.
On June 10, 2025, the National Security Department of the Hong Kong Police Force issued a warning reminding citizens that downloading, sharing, recommending, or funding the mobile game *Reversed Front: Beacon Fire* could violate the Hong Kong national security law or the Safeguarding National Security Ordinance. This warning paradoxically led to a sharp increase in the game's popularity, with a significant rise in search and download volumes, gaining further public attention and recognition.
France
The French intelligence agency DCRI's attempt to delete the French Wikipedia article about the military radio station of Pierre-sur-Haute resulted in the restored article temporarily becoming the most-viewed page on the French Wikipedia.
Greece A 2013 libel suit by Greek politician Theodore Katsanevas against a Greek Wikipedia editor resulted in members of the project bringing the story to the attention of journalists.
Hungary In 2020, , a politician of Fidesz and then deputy mayor of Győr sued a resident of his city, identified only as Zoltán B., for a Facebook comment posted on a friend's personal profile page. In July 2020, one of B's friends shared a blog post accusing Radnóti of voter solicitation, under which B. commented "pay no attention to him, he's a dick". The deputy mayor sued B. for defamation, and B. was sentenced to three years of probation.
The case received wide media attention, in part because Radnóti's party has a poor reputation in the areas of free speech and other human rights, in part because the politician's lawyer was the same Zoltán Rákosfalvy who defended ex-mayor Zsolt Borkai during his sex and corruption scandal in the preceding year, and in part because B's sentence was seen as comparatively harsh (the trial happened the same month in which ex-diplomat Gábor Kaleta was sentenced to one year of probation and a monetary fine for owning thousands of child pornography photographsGyermekpornográfiába bukott bele a perui magyar nagykövet Index, 2020. február 9.). Radnóti, who had previously been unknown outside his city, was widely criticised for being too sensitive and vindictive, and the outcome met disapproval from the general public, since politicians are public officials who are generally expected to endure criticism. Radnóti and the case was widely parodied online, with one popular blogger commenting that "he is more like a pussy" and paraphrasing a scene from Kafka's The Metamorphosis, with Radnóti being transformed into a penis. His Wikipedia page has been vandalized several times, with his profession being stated as "dick". A widespread joke stated that B. was in fact sentenced for releasing classified information.
B. appealed the sentence. As during the previous trial, he was defended by a lawyer of the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, while Radnóti represented himself this time, to avoid further association with Rákosfalvy. In January 2021 B. was acquitted on the basis that the politician received the insult as a consequence of his acts as a public official, thus he has to endure criticism.
India In February 2023, Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India sought to ban India: The Modi Question, a BBC documentary that was critical of him. This led to students in colleges across India screening the documentary on their own, on campus and elsewhere. Commentators argued that the ban had drawn more attention to the documentary than it would otherwise have received.
Israel In May 2009, the Israeli right-wing nationalist political party Yisrael Beiteinu introduced a bill that would outlaw all commemorations of the expulsion of Palestinians following the 1948 Palestine war, known as "Nakba", with a three-year prison sentence for such acts of remembrance.Budget Foundations Law (Amendment No. 40) 5771 – 2011 , translation by Adalah The original bill did not pass, and the controversy surrounding it unintentionally promoted knowledge of the Nakba within Israeli society.
Saudi Arabia A 2019 study of political imprisonment by the government of Saudi Arabia found that while incarceration tended to deter individual dissidents from further dissent, it strongly emboldened their social media followers, led to a sharp increase in calls for political reform, and resulted in an increase in online dissent and physical in-person protests overall, including criticism of the ruling family and calls for regime change. Such repression also draws public attention to the imprisoned dissidents and their causes, and does not deter other prominent figures in Saudi Arabia from continuing to dissent online.
South Africa In 2017, the government of South Africa stated their intention to ban a book by Jacques Pauw, The President's Keepers, detailing corruption within the government of then-President Jacob Zuma. This resulted in sales of the book skyrocketing, and it sold out within 24 hours before the ban was to be put into effect. The book became a national bestseller and led to multiple reprints. This effect was repeated when Pauw published Our Poisoned Land (2023) and the Economic Freedom Fighters took legal action in an effort to ban the book, thereby resulting in an increase in book sales.
Sweden In a royal letter from 1728, King Frederick did not want to ban writings that the contemporaries perceived as blasphemous against Christianity since, according to previous experience, such a ban would arouse curiosity among the public to find out more about these writings.<ref>Royal letter 27 June 1728.Quote from [https://sv.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Lagfarenhetsbibliotek_V_1.djvu Lagfarenhets-Bibliothek (1803), page 23
Tunisia In November 2007, Tunisia blocked access to YouTube and Dailymotion after material was posted depicting Tunisian political prisoners. Activists and their supporters then started to link the location of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's palace on Google Earth to videos about civil liberties in general. The Economist said this "turned a low-key human-rights story into a fashionable global campaign".
United Kingdom