Twitter received a legal request on June 12 to take down tweets by environmental activists protesting the construction of a concrete wall at Vainguinim beach in Goa. Most of the tweets have the hashtag #SaveVanguinimBeach and tag the chief minister of Goa, Dr Pramod Sawant. We reached out to the Union Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, and have not received a response. Twitter and the Goa government did not respond to a request for comment either. Twitter generally receives such requests from the government or law enforcement, and it is unclear who approached them in this case. As of the time of the publication of the story, Twitter has not acted on the request, and the tweets remain visible. According to a spreadsheet compiled by Aakash Madgavkar, one of the volunteers, sixteen of the 24 tweets have tagged Sawant, and all but one used the #SaveVainguinimBeach hashtag. Divya Sahasrabuddhe, another volunteer, said the group was seeking legal counsel on how to proceed. "In the interest of transparency, we are writing to inform you that Twitter has received official correspondence regarding your Twitter account. The correspondence claims that the following Tweet, is in violation of Indian laws," Twitter said in an email to targeted users. "We have not taken any action on the reported content as a result of this request. Please note, we may be obligated to take action regarding the content identified in this complaint in the future," the social media platform added. Activists brought up the…
