Animal Rights Advocates Say NIH Blocks Critical Comments on Social Media [View all]
Animal rights advocates filed a lawsuit on Thursday against two federal health agencies alleging they block certain critical comments on their social media accounts.
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and two individuals, represented by The Knight First Amendment Institute and the Animal Legal Defense Fund, respectively, filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia against the National Institutes of Health and Human Services Department regarding their use of Facebook and Instagram. NIH is part of HHS.
“Plaintiffs are animal rights advocates, including an animal rights organization, who
believe that the government’s continued support of primate testing is unconscionable,” said the complaint. “They have attempted to raise these concerns by commenting on the NIH’s Facebook and Instagram pages, but the NIH routinely hides plaintiffs’ comments from public view by using keyword blocking tools to prevent certain words and phrases associated with disfavored viewpoints, content, or speakers—like ‘PETA’ and ‘#stopanimaltesting’—from appearing on its social media pages.”
Stephanie Krent, a staff attorney with the Knight First Amendment Institute, told Government Executive on Friday, “this suit has been in the works for quite some time” as “it was late last year that PETA employees really first began to notice that several of the comments they were attempting to post, in particular on the Facebook page of the National Institutes of Health were for some reason not actually being posted” and they weren’t being notified that the comment didn’t go through
https://www.govexec.com/management/2021/09/animal-rights-advocates-say-nih-blocks-critical-comments-social-media/185279/
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