Facebook has blocked access to a service known as Tsu, which allows people to earn money by sharing content.
As the Daily News reports, Facebook has wiped the site clean of all Tsu content and does not allow users to share links from the service on Facebook, Instagram, or Messenger.
Tsu.co is in some ways a competitor to Facebook, offering a social service for users to share their thoughts, images, and more. However, Tsu.co shares revenue with users, and those users can either cash out or donate earnings to charity. "Our community gets up to 90 percent of all revenues," the Tsu.co website says. "It's your content, own it."
Now, when users type "Tsu.co" into their News Feeds or attempt to access the service's links from Facebook, they'll find that they are unable to do so. Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but told the Daily News that it was concerned about spam rather than competition. "We do not allow developers to incentivize content sharing on our platform because it encourages spammy sharing and creates a bad experience for people on Facebook," the company told the newspaper.
CNN Money reports that Tsu users were creating fake accounts to potentially increase the amount of money they made.
Facebook yanked Tsu access on Sept. 25, but would reinstate it if Tsu cuts off the ability for people to post to Tsu and Facebook at the same time, CNN Money said.
For its part, Tsu.co has railed against Facebook's decision, saying that it's "being singled out." In response to the press, however, Tsu has decided to make the invite-only service open to the public for a limited time, the Daily News says.