Increase in calls by Governments for Facebook user data

Calls by governments for Facebook's user data are up by nearly a quarter in the first half of this year compared to the previous six months.

Global government calls were up by 24% to almost 35,000 in the first six months, the social media giant said.

The amount of Facebook content restricted because of local laws also rose about 19%. News of the increase comes as Facebook fights its largest ever US court order to hand over data from 400 people.

Photographs, private messages and other information involving people in a benefit fraud trial were given to a New York court last year, but it was only made public in August.

"We're aggressively pursuing an appeal to a higher court to invalidate these sweeping warrants and to force the government to return the data it has seized," the social media giant said in a blog on Tuesday.

The world's largest social network also said that they "scrutinise" every government call for legal sufficiency and "push back hard when we find deficiencies or are served with overly broad requests."

Facebook has been under fire for its use of user data in recent years, fuelling online privacy concerns.

Last month, Facebook admitted that it would change the way it does research on users after a controversial experiment where it manipulated some users newsfeeds to affect their emotions.

Meanwhile, the tech giant has rolled out a series of features this year to help users protect their personal information.

- BBC