NIH Hid Public Comments Package — page 115

I know it was after the lawsuit was >in January 2015. discussed, irray. 1-2 examples with screenshots removes all of the animal related filters to get PETA to drop the lawsuit and then manually moderates PETA's off topic comments, PETA may file another lawsuit about the manual moderation so it may not get us very far. Please let us know your thoughts on if you are in agreement with the DOJ's assessment that losing the case versus not fighting it would have a similar effect. Next Steps and Additional Requests for Information The DOJ and PETA have agreed to file a stipulation of facts to avoid discovery, and then the briefs for summary judgement will be drafted based on these facts. Summary judgement means the judge will make a decision on the injunction based on the briefs without holding a full trial. The deadline for the stipulation of facts is next Wednesday, December 8th but this may be pushed back a few days. The DOJ seeks some additional information from the NIH to fill in the facts, outlined below: 1. Manual Moderation of Comments a. What was the exact date NIH stopped manually moderating comments? I know it was after the lawsuit was filed, but can you give us the date? b. When NIH was manually moderating comments, what was the frequency? For example, was the manual hiding of comments weekly? daily? every 4 hours Monday-Friday? constantly? 2. Comment Guidelines- In its complaint, PETA states NIH's Facebook was created on October 14, 2008 (and Instagram created in 2018). From our emails, you stated OGC approved the Comment Guidelines in January 2015. a. Do you know the exact date the Comment Guidelines become in effect? b. Before these Comment Guidelines, were any other comment policy or guidelines in place from 2008-2015 for Facebook commenting? 3. Pro-Animal Testing Comments a. Is there any way you could find examples of pro-animal testing comments that were hidden? This can either be the comment itself, or a comment thread where there was an anti-animal testing comment and a pro animal testing advocate replied to that comment, but the entire comment thread with replies to the original comment was hidden? It would be very helpful if you could find 2-3 examples of this and provide us with screenshots. If the comment was manually hidden, that is fine. It would be preferable if you could find this during the time frame of the complaint, which is between September 2020 to September 2021. 4. PETA' effect on NIH Goals- The DOJ would like to include an argument showing how PETA's spamming of off topic comments inhibits NIH's mission. As the keyword blocking does target animal testing and PETA as we've discussed, the DOJ wants to justify this targeting to state that the case isn't a debate about animal testing but about harassment from PETA. a. Do you have any statistics about how often PETA comments compared to other comments? Or statistics about how many comments are about animal testing? If there is any way DOJ could state animal testing comments are 50% of the comments received but the NIH has only posted about animal testing for 5% of its posts, that would be helpful. b. Could you find specific examples of how PETA stands out among all other groups and comments? We are looking for some extreme examples of PETA's comments where they go over the top to highlight 2-3 examples with screenshots. c. In addition, extreme examples of PETA's past actions not involving the social media platforms will help as well. On our last call you mentioned a campaign against Elisabeth Murray. 1-2 examples with screenshots or other documentation would be helpful. Thank you very much, and happy to have a call to review all of this. Thank you, Sarah J. Imhoff, JD, MHSA