Facebook has lifted a ban that blocked material from Tsu.co, a small rival challenging the world’s largest social network’s financial dependence on free content shared by its 1.5 billion users.
The dispute between facebook and Tsu began in late September when Facebook removed nearly 10 million posts containing links and other references to Tsu (pronounced “soo”). Facebook also blocked attempts to post anything else that sent traffic to Tsu.co, both on the pages of its social network or on in its popular Messenger and Instagram applications.
Tsu’s ouster stemmed from its practice of sharing ad revenue with its users. The payments are based on how many people read their posts.
Facebook decided Tsu’s payments represented a financial incentive for people to share links on its network, something the Menlo Park, California, company says it prohibits because it believes the practice pollutes its service with the digital rubbish known as “spam.”
The two sides resolved their differences with a truce that required New York-based Tsu.co to remove a feature that allowed its users to share content directly to Facebook with one click on an app. Now Tsu.co users will have to go through several extra steps to transfer their posts to Facebook, or just copy and paste a link.
