Facebook cut off data access to rival companies which it saw as threatening its business model, according to internal documents seized as part of Parliament's "fake news" inquiry.

The documents, dating from 2012 and 2013 and published by Parliament on Wednesday, show senior Facebook executives including Mark Zuckerberg discussing how to choke off companies who began to compete with its own services.

They also show Facebook staff discussing how to avoid asking users' permission to read their text messages and record their mobile phone logs in order to dodge a "PR fallout".

The documents are likely to raise further questions about whether Facebook, which has attracted attention from European antitrust regulators, is abusing its dominant position in social networking to strangle competitors.

A previous release from the same trove showed that Facebook considered trading access to its data in return for various considerations, something Mr Zuckerberg has said it will never do.

In response, Facebook said the documents were presented in a "very misleading manner", that it stood by its platform policies and that it had never sold users' data.

In one email, Mr Zuckerberg is asked to sign off on plans to "shut down" data access for Vine, a video-sharing app launched by Facebook's rival service, Twitter. He responds: "Yup, go for it."