Transport for London had a Facebook advert removed after the Advertising Standards Authority ruled that a short clip from its “Act Like a Friend” campaign reinforced a negative racial stereotype about black males. The clip showed a black teenage boy verbally harassing a white girl on a bus while a white male friend sat beside her. The ASA said that when seen on its own the video could be interpreted as linking black males with threatening behaviour and that it was therefore irresponsible and harmful. TfL explained that the shortened edit that was complained about was part of a longer film showing a range of scenarios and characters, and said it would no longer use that specific clip.
The ruling has struck some as absurd. The original campaign was aimed at encouraging people to intervene safely in cases of sexual harassment and hate crime on the transport network. The advert was reflecting a real problem that passengers can face, and it showed a situation in which a bystander could step in. Yet the ASA decision means that unless the perpetrator in such adverts is a white man, the clip is likely to be banned. A single viewer complaint led to this outcome and TfL has now withdrawn the short edit in question, even though the longer film had broader context and accuracy in showing the issue it was designed to address.
The most recent official UK figures show that for all types of recorded crime across England and Wales, black people were arrested at a rate of about 20.4 per 1,000 people in the year to March 2023 compared with a rate of 9.4 per 1,000 for white people.
The Streisand effect is a phenomenon where attempting to suppress or censor information only makes it more widely known. It is named after Barbra Streisand, who in 2003 tried to prevent photographs of her Malibu home from being published online, which inadvertently drew far more attention to the images than if she had done nothing. Essentially, the more effort is made to hide something, the more people notice it and share it, often turning the attempt at control into a form of viral publicity.
