We call this the Barbra Streisand Effect!

What is the Barbra Streisand Effect? 

Apart from being absolutely fabulous at everything she does, Babs has become linked to a phenomenon where an attempt to hide, remove, or censor information has the unintended consequence of publicising or popularising it more widely.

In 2003, she attempted to suppress photographs of her residence in Malibu, California, by suing a photographer and a website that published the pictures.

Her legal action gained more attention for the images, and as a result, they became widely spread across the internet. The Streisand effect has since become a term used to describe instances where attempts to control or limit information lead to increased visibility and awareness.

This phenomenon often occurs when there is an attempt to suppress information that is of public interest, controversial, or noteworthy. The more one tries to restrict access to the information, the more likely it is to attract attention from the public and the media. The Streisand effect highlights the challenges of controlling information in the digital age, where content can quickly and easily be shared and disseminated on a global scale.

What has this to do with our GreenSquareAccord Residents website?

The GreenSquareAccord Residents website has achieved its goal; it had fulfilled its purpose.

  • It has provided me and others a platform for raising issues when we had been ignored by GreenSquareAccord.

  • It has given me the impetus to launch my Housing Sector website, offering resident insight to the larger sector from firsthand experiences of being failed by a leading housing provider - GreenSquareAccord.

  • It has played its part in supporting my neighbours and other residents by using social media to ensure GreenSquareAccord's current CEO, Ruth Cooke, was unable to deny accountability.

  • The Housing Ombudsman agreed with the issues I raised, and our housing provider has rectified some of the issues (although to this day they seem unable or unwilling to resolve all).

In short, it has served its purpose, and I was ready to close it down and move forward. I even emailed Ruth Cooke, offering the chance to sit down, clear the air, and discuss the transition of the site and associated social media accounts over to her. This was in August when the site was naturally running down and was achieving, on average, just over 483 visits a month (based on figures for Jan ’23 - Aug ’23) with 25% of these visits being driven from search engines.

Had GreenSquareAccord taken a less obtuse stance, this is where the story of the GreenSquareAccord Resident support site would have ended, but they didn’t, so it lingered on.

The Barbra Streisand Effect!

Under the stewardship of Sophie Atkinson, GreenSquareAccord's Executive Director of Governance, someone who presumably has an understanding of law and claims, her areas of practice are in charities, commercial property, company and commercial, conveyancing - residential, Information technology, landlord and tenant - residential. However, she seemed to believe that she could silence freedom of expression along with copyright law in the County Court rather than the High Court deciding the best way to close a resident support website down was through legal action. Of course, she failed, and this is where The Barbra Streisand Effect kicked into gear. 

  • People who had been silently sitting on the fence came forward to show their support.

  • Offers have started to come in from people wishing to discuss opportunities to help improve the service being provided by the sector, to learn from the failings of GreenSquareAccord.

  • Better than all of this, other residents found our resident support site, seeking support and guidance.

  • In November, the site received almost 12k visitors (an increase of over 148% over the average site visits between Jan - August).

What lies ahead? 

Well, with Ms. Atkinson having failed to close the site down, she has again advised her employer GreenSquareAccord that the best course of action is yet more legal action. So next week, we go back to Court, as such, we can only guess at what the site traffic will be like for December and the New Year.

I still have a website that has served its purpose, but the fact that GreenSquareAccord seems so desperate to close it down makes me think it has to stay up.

  • What do you think?

  • Why are GreenSquareAccord so desperate to take it down?

  • After all, aren't we all supposed to be focused on openness and transparency these days?

  • Anyone interested in taking over the day-to-day runnings?

  • Should I just leave it up there for Google to signpost people?