University ban

Facebook has raised concerns about the work of University of Cambridge academics involved in similar research.

The Cambridge Psychometrics Centre has been banned from the platform while Facebook investigates allegations that it misused data.

The centre denies the allegation that it handed data gathered from a personality quiz for academic research to the commercial company Cubeyou.

"We have had several conversations and meetings with Facebook researchers going back as far as 2011," said a spokesman for the Psychometrics Centre.

"However, Facebook has chosen not to publish its research, and therefore users will be unaware how their data may be being used."

This is a separate case from the one in which another academic, Dr Aleksandr Kogan, is accused of breaking rules by passing data to Cambridge Analytica.

During congressional hearings earlier this month, Facebook's chief executive Mark Zuckerberg appeared to link the two cases, saying "we do need to know whether there was something bad going on at Cambridge University overall".