The appeal of super injunctions was the fact that they prevented any discussion in the media of not only the facts and the names of the parties but even the existence of legal proceedings. There is logic to this approach since, once an anonymised injunction is reported, it inevitably leads to media speculation about the identities of the parties involved.

In one of the first and most famous instances of a super-injunction failing, the footballer Ryan Giggs was outed in 2011 as the subject of an injunction prohibiting publication of claims he had an extra marital affair, after his name began trending on Twitter. Following that case, concerns were expressed that super-injunctions posed a threat to freedom of expression and the principle of open justice.