Wannabe tyrants fall to the Streisand effect because censors deserve our mockery

Two decades after it permeated public consciousness, the “Streisand effect” is alive and well and battering the reputations of would-be tyrants across Europe. You’ve seen this social-media phenomenon in action whenever a powerful person’s attempt to suppress online information backfires spectacularly.It became an early Internet meme after Barbra Streisand sued to scrub a photo of her Malibu estate from the Internet in 2003 — and turned a little-noticed pic that had been viewed all of six times into a joke that 500,000 people downloaded.

 Apparently some politicians across the pond have been living in a bubble.Take Britain’s Simon Bennett, a local pol with a seat on the city council of Wolverhampton, a small city near Birmingham.When a 15-year-old boy named Fraser used Facebook to post an AI-altered photo of Bennett as a bunny rabbit, with a pointed caption jabbing him for “nibbling” at his Conservative party’s “last remaining shreds of ..

.credibility,” the councillor didn’t laugh it off — he called the police. The West Midlands Police, incredibly, didn’t just visit Fraser: They arrested him, seized his devices and took him in for questioning.But if you don’t want people sharing a picture of you as a bunny rabbit, you probably shouldn’t call attention to it. Because as Barbra Streisand could have told Bennett, that will backfire.Before the police action, Fraser’s original Facebook post was only seen by a relatively small audience — now the picture of bunny-rabbit Bennett has been viewed by millions.The image has been widely reproduced in news coverage (The New York Post, The Telegraph and others) and has gone viral on social media.One post on Polymarket’s X account has more than 6.8 million views. Free-speech advocates like David Atherton reposted the pic in solidarity, adding, “Come and get me West Midlands Police.”And meme-ified variations of Fraser’s manipulated photo now abound.None of this is a surprise — i...