SYDNEY/BERLIN — Tech giant Facebook has opposed calls by Australian media companies for digital platforms to be regulated, amid an inquiry into their impact on competition in news and advertising markets.

The government tasked the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission earlier this year with assessing whether platforms such as Facebook and Google were using their market power in commercial dealings to the detriment of users, news media and advertisers.

Australian media groups, like their peers worldwide, are losing circulation and advertising revenues to digital competitors.

Australian media tycoon Kerry Stokes, the head of major commercial broadcaster Seven, on Monday urged Canberra to take “serious action” against the two online titans.

“The government must act decisively to curtail the frightening power and influence these companies have,” Stokes told The Australian newspaper.

“The duopoly of Facebook and Google now control over 80 percent of the global digital ad market, taking away advertising dollars from local media without any of the controls and rules we must adhere to, creating an uneven playing field.”

The industry body representing commercial free-to-air television networks, Free TV Australia, echoed such views in its submission Friday, saying the two companies were virtual monopolies but had “very little regulatory oversight”.

The inquiry comes at a sensitive time for Facebook, which has come under fire globally after it admitted that the personal data of up to 87 million people worldwide — including more than 300,000 Australians — were improperly shared with a British political consultancy.

Facebook said in its submission to the inquiry on Wednesday, sent to AFP Monday, that rapid technological changes such as media digitalization “makes them a challenging subject for regulatory intervention”.

The American firm added that “consumers often have the most to gain from market disruptions caused by technological change and the most to lose from interventions that are designed to protect particular business models from the effects of those changes”.

Meanwhile, a leading politician from German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative party warned on Monday that Facebook’s dominance makes competition “impossible”, joining a broadside against the social network from Berlin.

“Facebook has reached a critical mass that makes competition impossible,” Christian Democratic Union (CDU) lawmaker and digital policy spokesman Thomas Jarzombek told Bild, the country’s biggest-selling newspaper.

The MP believes “people only use social networks if their friends are already members” — a tall order for any new competitor to the Silicon Valley giant with its more than two billion users worldwide, around 30 million of them in Germany.

Jarzombek argued that members of different social networks should be able to communicate with one another by sending messages, friend requests or photos and videos without signing up to every service — just like customers of different mobile operators can call, text or send data to one another.

Justice and Consumer Protection Minister Katarina Barley earlier this month labeled the firm a “network of intransparency” where “ethical convictions have fallen victim to commercial interests”.

Germany’s competition watchdog said in March it was investigating Facebook for “abusive” collection and use of data from sources outside its network, pointing to information gathered via “like” buttons embedded on other publishers’ webpages. — AFP