Facebook has recorded 16,580 data requests from the Indian government in the first six months of 2018 -- a steep rise compared to a total of 22,024 requests in the full year of 2017 and 13,613 in 2016.

In the January-June 2018 period, Facebook provided some data to the government in 53 per cent of the requests, although the social networking giant did not reveal which kind of data as it published its transparency report late on Thursday.