Barbra Streisand may have had a long and illustrious career, but she has had a few missteps along the way.

Her 2003 attempts to try and suppress photos of her Malibu mansion are a classic example of this, when she succeeded only in drawing more attention to the photos, which were then seen by a wider audience.

In short, the Streisand Effect is the act of trying to suppress information, but then simply making it more widespread as a result.

It can be seen in action when it comes to Anna Basson Properties, a realtor which operates in Stellenbosch.

They were clearly unhappy with a Google Review left by someone who says they had a bad experience with the business.

When you Google a company, you can see the list of Google Reviews where the red arrow is below:

Anna Basson Properties decided to take action against the person who left the review, which led to this Reddit thread:

Clearly, the reviewer didn’t take the review down, which led to a follow-up Reddit thread, titled “When a google review gets you a lawyer letter Part 2“.

Initially, that thread included the lawyer’s letter, but it has now been removed.

We managed to get a screenshot of the letter, which ended as follows:

In toto? I bless the raaaaains down in Afriiiiiica.

Sorry, I saw it on the thread and I couldn’t resist.

I had a look at HelloPeter (as mentioned in the lawyer’s letter above) and couldn’t find any review by Timo Goosen, the recipient of the lawyer’s letter – just three terrible reviews that weren’t his.

Knowing that the review was made by Timo, we scrolled through the Google Reviews and found this:

Here’s the really funny thing – how many people would have seen that review if Anna Basson Properties had just left it, or contacted Timo and tried to resolve the issues he raised?

Probably not many, but then the negative reviews flooded in, and the review was shared far and wide.

This is a screenshot of the Google Reviews, taken yesterday:

Boom – they Streisanded themselves.

We checked again this morning, and suddenly the most recent review is from two months ago, so it appears that these have since been removed.

We don’t know whether what Timo wrote is accurate – he certainly believes he has been wronged – but sending out lawyer’s letters seems somewhat heavy-handed.

Here’s looking at you, Barbs.

Thanks, Johann

[sources:reddit&reddit]