NIH Hid Public Comments Package — page 62

/OD) a a Lankford, ne, Amanda > pages are designated public forums, it is possible NIH would not be able to include neutral filters to prevent discussion about a broad topic, such as animal testing generally or COVID vaccinations generally. Question- What date did NIH remove the Instagram filters #stopanimaltesting, #stoptesting, and #stoptestingonanimals? We have not done that yet, but can be done immediately. 2. To follow-up on the inquiry about pro-animal testing comments, the DOJ would like to make the argument that the NIH doesn't have a policy of targeting anti-animal testing posts. Posts defending animal testing, as much as posts critical of animal testing, would not be permitted if they are off-topic, inflammatory, etc. I know you said you don't have any examples of hiding pro-animal testing comments, but again, if we can include examples of where the filters caught some of those posts, whether separate posts or posts in response to an anti-animal testing post, that would help. If there are any issues where there might have been more debate that you could browse through to double check, such as maybe the beagle uproar, that would be helpful. We'll continue to look, but this is not a scenario that happens because people aren't really posting pro-animal testing. However we do have examples of other instances where we have hidden comments that were off topic. For example we posted about NIH's ending structural racism effort, and there were comments about Wuhan Institute of Virology and Ivermectin that were hidden for being off topic. Thank you, Sarah J. Imhoff, JD, MHSA Senior Attorney Office of the General Counsel Public Health Division, NIH Branch (direct) @nih.gov This e-mail message is intended for the exclusive use of the recipient(s) named above. It may contain information that is protected, privileged, or confidential, and it should not be disseminated, distributed, or copied to persons not authorized to receive such information. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution, or copying is strictly prohibited. If you think you have received this e-mail message in error, please notify the sender immediately. From: Imhoff, Sarah (NIH/OD) [E] Sent: Monday, December 6, 2021 7:07 PM To: Kern, Anna (NIH/OD) [E] < @nih.gov> Cc: Spruill, Crystal (NIH/OD) [C] < @nih.gov>; Prince, Scott (NIH/OD) [E] < @nih.gov>; Lankford, David (NIH/OD) [E] < @od31tm1.od.nih.gov>; Myles, Renate (NIH/OD) [E] < @mail.nih.gov>; Fine, Amanda (NIH/OD) [E] < @nih.gov>; Polimeni, Lydia (NIH/OD) [E] < @nih.gov> Subject: RE: PETA Lawsuit Update and Requests for Information Importance: High Hi Anna and team, Thank you so much! This is extremely helpful. I will work with DOJ on incorporating this information into the facts. Please see my responses below in red. After all your work, I already have a request for follow-up. The draft stipulation of facts we received from the Plaintiffs included a number of examples of specific comments that were hidden from NIH's Facebook and Instagram. They attribute these hidden comments to NIH's Facebook and Instagram filter lists. Interestingly, we have discovered that the HHS Facebook comments plaintiffs mention were likely filtered through Facebook's own spam filter, as HHS does not filter "monkey" from its Facebook comments (as a reminder, Plaintiffs only claimed HHS' Facebook blocked the word monkey and only gave a few examples). Due to this, DOJ is currently discussing removing HHS from the lawsuit with Plaintiffs, so then the only defendant would be NIH. Therefore, we'd like to confirm that these hidden comments were actually based on NIH's own filters and not some other mechanism.