Virality and the challenge of online privacy.
The term “Streisand effect” (or “Streisand Effect”) refers to the effect whereby an attempt to censor or remove information or content on the web results, instead, in greater publicity for the information or content itself.
This phenomenon manifests itself in the widespread practice among Internet users of downloading web content onto physical media to store and reshare, perhaps on different sites and under different names, especially when attempting to erase all traces of such content from the web, ultimately making it go “viral” and thus preventing its oblivion.
The Streisand effect is often cited in connection with the fight against the dissemination of non-consensual intimate images (or N.C.I.I.) because, often, when victims of this crime try to protect their privacy by requesting the removal of these images through legal action or other means, the most difficult obstacle is precisely the virality achieved by the material in question.
Fortunately, efforts are now being made to curb this re-sharing practice, thanks in part to the use of new technological tools such as the one provided free of charge by StopNCII.org. This tool, through a hashing and matching mechanism for reported images, is able to limit their circulation on partner platforms participating in the StopNCII.org project.