Those Fat Axl memes

[Dave W]

Axl is trying to cleanse then from the internet

IMHO it's a clear abuse of the DMCA. The photographer and/or his newspaper hold the copyright on the photo, not Axl. And even if he did, good luck trying to eliminate it.  There are thousands of them posted on social media. He'll probably bring more attention to them. Dumbass.

[Pilgrim]

Ah, don't you love it when some idiot tries to censor this kind of content - and in the process, generates 10x the negative publicity the content would have caused if they had never pushed raised the issue??

[Granny Gremlin]

What's the stupidest is how the next person will not learn from Axl's experience - just like Axl hasn't learned from the time (hit the news just a couple months ago) that UC Davis tried it.  They hired consultants to try to scrub pics of their own security pepper spraying students at point blank range from the internet.  Then students and faculty got wind of it and some dean was eventually fired (or resigned in shame; forget exactly) for wasting 175k on that futile effort

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/grade-point/wp/2016/04/14/uc-davis-scrubbed-negative-online-presence-after-2011-pepper-spraying-scandal/

Also, consultants exist that claim they can do this for you.  f*** those sheisters. 

[Dave W]

That's called the Streisand Effect, which was coined by Mike Masnick, owner of Techdirt. Back a dozen or so years ago, a photographer took aerial photos of a small segment of the California coastline in an area that included Barbara Streisand's home. Nobody outside of a handful of people knew about it until Streisand sued the photographer for $50 million. Once that was publicized, suddenly hundreds of thousand of people viewed her home.

The Streisand Effect

[Granny Gremlin]

It's a little bit of a different situation (plenty of people knew about the pepper spray incident - it was all over the news - same for Axl meme's) and there was no suit so much as a naive attempt to 'scrub' the internet.  Similar enough in principle I suppose.

[Dave W]

It's a little bit of a different situation (plenty of people knew about the pepper spray incident - it was all over the news - same for Axl meme's) and there was no suit so much as a naive attempt to 'scrub' the internet.  Similar enough in principle I suppose.

A little different, yes, but with the passage of time now it's being used for any attempt suppress information that then winds up bringing it much more attention. Techdirt has a Streisand Effect tag now, so far this year there are 29 stories with the tag.