Poor governance and privacy concerns have knocked Facebook out of an influential ethics index that tracks socially responsible companies.

Standard & Poor's Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Index said that it had booted Facebook after the company scored poorly for social responsibility and governance, achieving 22 and 6, respectively, out of 100.

Facebook’s disappointing results were due to a number of privacy concerns at the social network in recent years including “a lack of transparency as to why Facebook collects and shares certain user information”, said Reid Steadman, S&P's social and governance chief.

This includes allowing more than 150 companies access to more users’ personal data without their knowing, the S&P said, along with the misuse of personal information, citing the Cambridge Analytica debacle, and a data breach in which 50 million accounts were hacked.

“These events have created uncertainty about Facebook’s diligence regarding privacy protection, and the effectiveness of the company risk management processes and how the company enforces them,” Mr Steadman said. “These issues caused the company to lag behind its peers in terms of ESG performance.”

S&P reassessed the index on April 30 and removed two further tech giants, Oracle and IBM, but Facebook is the largest company it has dropped.