Altice plagued by the “Streisand effect”: this information that Patrick Drahi wanted to hide


The Streisand effect is when you want to prevent information from getting out, you prefer to keep it secret but this produces the opposite effect: the information ultimately reaches many more people than if it had simply been published, without attempting to hide it. This is what happens to Altice, the group of Patrick Drahi.

Articles revealing the lifestyle of the billionaire

He sued the news site reflections for publishing articles based on stolen documents. Not by journalists, but by hackers who had made them available online for everyone. These articles revealed in particular the lifestyle of the billionaire. Altice wanted to have them removed and prevent journalists from publishing more based on the hacked data.

Justice did not ask to remove the articles already published but decided to prohibit the publication of future articles. A decision decried by many media, journalists and unions. Result: the revelations of the articles received a spotlight. In one month, the Twitter account of reflections would have reached a total of three million people, mainly on content that spoke of Altice.

reflections gained visibility thanks to this case

Usually it’s ten times less. In one month, about 300,000 people read tweets from the account of Reflections. And it also allowed the news site to increase its number of subscribers, between 400 and 500 more.

And the case is now on Altice’s Wikipedia account. It can be totally counterproductive to prevent journalists from publishing certain information This concerns articles that have already been published but, since the court decision, reflections can no longer publish articles on Altice, based on the hacked data. The news site decided to do it anyway. He has published since the court decision and will continue.

“We believe that these articles are of interest to the public. This raises societal questions: what is the role of these mega groups? How are they built? What political decisions have allowed over the years that behemoths of this kind take form? We are quite confident. We think we will win the appeal… This problem should have been settled before a specialized press law chamber. It is press law that should apply and not not a procedure before the commercial court”, explains the editor-in-chief of reflectionsAntoine Champagne, at the microphone of Culture Media on Europe 1.

The appeal procedure will take place on November 23.



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