Investors are suing Facebook, claiming that the company made “false and misleading statements” about its policies that failed to prevent a disgraced British firm obtaining the data of 50 million users.

Fan Yuan, a shareholder, filed the lawsuit in San Francisco on behalf of an undisclosed number of investors, claiming that Facebook’s “omissions” led to a “precipitous” decline in the company’s share price, which wiped almost $50 billion off the company’s value on Monday and Tuesday.

The action piles pressure on the social media company, which is under investigation by US and British officials, and came as Brian Acton, the co-founder of WhatsApp backed calls to “delete Facebook” which were trending on Twitter last night. Mr Acton, whose firm was bought by Facebook for