The Streisand effect describes a situation where an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information results in the unintended consequence of the effort instead increasing public awareness of the information.

The term was coined in 2005 by Mike Masnick after Barbra Streisand attempted to suppress the publication of a photograph by Kenneth Adelman showing her clifftop residence in Malibu, taken to document coastal erosion in California. Her efforts inadvertently drew widespread attention to the previously obscure photograph.