San Francisco, May 4 (IANS): Facebook has posted $3 billion in profit in the first quarter of 2017, a 76 per cent rise year-on-year.

Facebook scored $8.03 billion in revenue from 1.94 billion users, up from 1.86 billion users last quarter. Facebook's revenue growth marked an increase of 49 per cent year-over-year.

The user base of the social networking giant, despite the numerous controversies, showed a growth rate of 4.3 per cent compared to 3.91 per cent last quarter.

"We had a good start to 2017. We're continuing to build tools to support a strong global community,"said Mark Zuckerberg, CEO Facebook, in a statement on Wednesday.

Mobile advertising revenue represented approximately 85 per cent of advertising revenue for the first quarter of 2017, up from approximately 82 per cent of advertising revenue in the first quarter of 2016, Facebook said.

Post US presidential elections, Facebook remained entangled in controversies over fake news and video violence.

To monitor content and remove violent videos, Facebook will be hiring 3,000 additional employees over the next year. It has also rolled out number of tools to battle against fake news and hate speech.

Facebook's live videos and 'Story' feature -- that was in all probability imitated from Snapchat -- attracted a lot of users.