There's a new social media platform out there — but Facebook has blocked all mention of it. 
 
 Try typing the name Tsu.co into Facebook, Messenger or Instagram and you'll find that you can't. 
 
 Tsu, a competing social network with about 4.5 million users, launched in 2014 with a new view of social media in mind. On Tsu, users can earn money based on advertising revenue sharing. It's a business model that's not all that different from YouTube, which is not banned. 
 
 Nonetheless, on Sept. 25, Facebook blocked all users from mentioning Tsu.co. Try messaging a friend about tsu.co and you'll get an alert: "The content you're trying to share includes a link that our security systems detected to be unsafe." 
 
 tsu.co Facebook is blocking users from posting about Tsu. 
 
 "You can post PornHub links on Facebook, but not tsu.co," Tsu founder Sebastian Sobczak told the Daily News. 
 
 On top of that, Facebook went back and deleted about 10 million posts referencing Tsu. 
 
 While some of the posts were cross-posted between Facebook and Tsu, about 80% were native to Facebook. For instance, if a user posted content — like a picture or video — and included links to their other social media accounts, that post has now vanished if one of those profiles was on Tsu 
 
 Facebook This is the message Facebook users get if they try to post links to Tsu. 
 
 Sometimes, Sobczak said, even links to media coverage about Tsu get blocked. 
 
 "We have the same model that YouTube does," he said. "We want the same rights as YouTube. We have a model that is efficient and dangerous to them." 
 
 Tsu users get paid when other people view ads associated with content they created. If you're just viewing content — and not creating it — you don't get paid. 
 
 Facebook Facebook won’t let users talk to one another about social media site Tsu.co. 
 
 Unlike Facebook, which keeps all of the profits from ad revenue, Tsu gives 90% back to users — you get 45% and the chain of friends who invited you get the rest. 
 
 Normally, Tsu membership is invite-only, but Sobczak said that because of the increased media attention about Facebook's ban, he has decided to open it up to everyone for the time being. 
 
 "It's so people can try it out and see that there's no malware on your computer," he said. "There's no voodoo magic, it's free." 
 
 tsu.co Tsu.co has temporarily suspended its invite-only policy. 
 
 It may seem like Facebook is just trying to stamp out competing platforms, but the social media giant says that's not the case. 
 
 According to Facebook, financially incentivized content violates the company's Platform Policy. 
 
 "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," said Facebook spokesperson Melanie Ensign. 
 
 Sobczak sees it a little differently. He thinks it's about squashing the competition. 
 
 "We have a model that is efficient and dangerous to them," he said. 
 
 kblakinger@nydailynews.com ||||| Try mentioning the social media website Tsu.co on Facebook or Instagram -- or even in a private conversation on Facebook Messenger. It won't work. 
 
 Facebook (FB) is blocking any link to Tsu.co on every platform it owns, including Messenger and Instagram. It even went back and deleted more than 1 million Facebook posts that ever mentioned Tsu.co, making pictures, videos and comments disappear in an instant. 
 
 You can type the name "Tsu," but you'll be blocked if you write "Tsu.co" or post any link from the site. 
 
 Facebook claims Tsu links are spam that are annoying the community. Tsu thinks Facebook is a bully trying to kill off competition. 
 
 "We're persona non grata," said Sebastian Sobczak, who founded Tsu. "You can type in all sorts of seedy websites, and you can get to them. But not us. We don't exist." 
 
 Tsu is a tiny new social network that claims to share its advertising revenue with its users. 
 
 Unlike most social media sites, including Facebook, which keep 100% of the profit from the ads displayed on your page, Tsu only keeps 10%. You keep 45%. The chain of friends that invited you to Tsu split the rest. 
 
 That means there's a financial incentive to post on Tsu, invite people to Tsu, and direct people to your Tsu page. There's even incentive to send people to the Tsu pages of the folks who you brought into the Tsu network. 
 
 Your Facebook feed could easily be flooded with Tsu.co links. 
 
 And that's exactly what Facebook has encountered. Tsu users were creating fake accounts to boost their pages. Facebook says its users started reporting Tsu.co links as spam, which Facebook defines as "sending bulk messages, excessively posting links ... and sending friend requests to people you don't know personally." 
 
 On September 25, Facebook cut off Tsu.co completely. 
 
 Tsu said it had been receiving a decent amount of traffic from Facebook, averaging more than 2,534 visits a day. When that dropped to zero, Tsu appealed to Facebook, arguing that it didn't violate Facebook's terms of service, because it did not pay users to push content to Facebook. 
 
 It didn't work. 
 
 Facebook says it will unblock Tsu if it changes just one thing: Tsu users shouldn't be able to simultaneously post to Tsu and Facebook. 
 
 "We do not allow developers to incentivize content sharing on our platform because it encourages spammy sharing," said Melanie Ensign, a Facebook spokesperson. 
 
 CNNMoney spoke to a dozen Tsu users. Most are photographers, models and other artists drawn to what they say is Tsu's more equitable pay-for-content program. Most of them haven't made a dime yet. But they feel this Facebook block is unfair. 
 
 Claudia Everest is a 47-year-old cancer survivor living in northern England. To pass the time during chemotherapy, she started A Dog A Day, drawing 25 dogs every day and selling her work from home. She's furious that Facebook deleted every post in which she ever mentioned Tsu.co -- 7,500 by her estimate. 
 
 "Facebook either completely removed or labeled them as malicious content," she said. "If you take a look at my cartoons I think you will agree that the idea that my work is malicious is laughable." 
 
 Carolina Franco, a 28-year-old model in Colombia, thinks Facebook's strategy is an attempt to keep its users from flocking to a competitor. 
 
 "Very few people even know about Tsu," she said. "I don't believe that Facebook and Instagram want Tsu to go viral. it would cost them a lot of money." ||||| SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Suppose every time you posted on Facebook, the social network tallied up the ad revenue it earned against your update and passed a percentage back to you. Of course, Facebook does nothing of the sort — but its much smaller rival Tsu.co does. 
 
 In this Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2015, photo, Sebastian Sobczak, CEO of Tsu.co, poses in his company's New York office. Tsu.co is winning converts to its social network by paying them for their posts. Facebook... (Associated Press) 
 
 In this Wednesday, Nov. 4, 2015, photo, Sebastian Sobczak, CEO of Tsu.co, poses in his company's New York office. Tsu.co is winning converts to its social network by paying them for their posts. Facebook... (Associated Press) 
 
 Though now Tsu (pronounced "Sue") appears to be paying a different sort of price. In late September, Facebook started deleting millions of posts that included links to Tsu — more than 9.5 million of them, the smaller company claims. Facebook also blocks new posts that merely contain the text "tsu.co" but no links, warns users that links to Tsu are "unsafe" and fails to deliver Instagram posts and texts via Facebook Messenger that mention Tsu's Internet address or link to the site. 
 
 Facebook defends its Tsu ban as a way to prevent its service from turning into a hangout for scam artists and opportunists hoping to make a quick buck. Tsu says Facebook just doesn't want its users to realize that their photos, videos and personal observations might actually be worth something. 
 
 Facebook, which has an understandable interest in protecting its 1.5 billion users from an onslaught of digital rubbish, is one of the Internet's largest gatekeepers. That gives it extraordinary sway in determining who can reach its vast membership — not to mention what those members can discuss using its apps and services. 
 
 That can be a big issue when the subject involves a challenge to a company's core business — in this case, selling advertising against the material Facebook users contribute for free. Facebook has earned $2.1 billion on revenue of $12 billion during the first nine months of this year alone. The company now has a market value of about $300 billion, and no particular interest in generating traffic for a potential competitor. 
 
 There's a long history of similar disputes among technology companies, who almost always claim to be acting in the interests of their users. Amazon, for instance, recently yanked Google and Apple streaming-TV devices from its virtual shelves, clearing the way for its own such gadgets. In just the past few days, several banks have blocked outside financial-planning apps from connecting to their systems, citing security concerns. 
 
 Tsu, which launched just over a year ago, has grown quickly; CEO Sebastian Sobczak says it has 4 million members. It has raised about $11 million in venture capital. 
 
 Facebook's Tsu purge came without warning and affected a swath of users that included rap artist 50 Cent, who shared a link to a video on Tsu with more than 38 million Facebook fans. The team that handles 50 Cent's social media accounts didn't respond to requests for comment. 
 
 Facebook says that Tsu pays its users to post links on other sites, an incentive that breaks its rules for connecting with its social network. In a statement, Facebook said it doesn't let outside publishers pay users to post links on its network "because it encourages spammy sharing." The Menlo Park, California, company declined to elaborate. 
 
 Sobczak denies that his service is paying people to post links on Facebook. Tsu users are paid based on how much advertising it sells alongside their posts. That revenue-sharing setup is similar to financial models used by major digital services such as Google's YouTube; Facebook users widely share YouTube links with one another. 
 
 "It feels like we are being singled out and they are trying to stop a competitor with a more efficient business model," Sobczak says. "What are they afraid of?" Sobczak, a former venture capitalist, says Facebook hasn't responded to his inquiries. 
 
 Claudia Everest, a frustrated Facebook user who embraced Tsu to find buyers for her $30 drawings of dogs, says Facebook is trying to deflect attention from Tsu's revenue-sharing concept. 
 
 "I don't think they are afraid of Tsu as much as they are of anything that lets people know their content has value," says Everest, who lives in Stoke on Trent in England. "That picture you posted of your dinner last night may not seem like it has value, but it does to the advertisers." 
 
 Facebook does, however, frequently rejigger its algorithms in ways that sometimes limit how many people see any given post. Such changes have alienated some longtime users such as Kevin Hinkle of Lake Mary, Florida. Hinkle had built a Facebook following of nearly 5,000 people, but felt as if his posts weren't reaching as many people over time. 
 
 For Hinkle, the reduced exposure meant fewer people to advise in his self-described role as a "joyologist." He's been pleased with the response on Tsu since he set up an account late last year. Hinkle says he has made about $4,100 on Tsu while averaging 10 to 20 posts per day. 
 
 "Now it looks like it could become a Facebook competitor," Hinkle says. "I think Facebook sees where things could be heading and knows it wouldn't be good for them at all." 
 
 ---- 
 
 Brandon Bailey contributed reporting to this article. 
 
 Follow Michael Liedtke at twitter.com/liedtkesfc. His work can be found at http://bigstory.ap.org/content/michael-liedtke
– The social media platform Tsu.co has garnered more than 4 million users since its 2013 inception, but Facebook would have you believe it simply doesn't exist. Since late September, Facebook has blocked (and retroactively deleted 10 million) mentions of and links to Tsu.co from any of its platforms, including Instagram and Messenger, reports the New York Daily News. "You can post PornHub links on Facebook, but not Tsu.co," Tsu founder Sebastian Sobczak says. And while he claims that the reason for the block is having a model that is "dangerous to them," Facebook rep Melanie Ensign says it all boils down to user experience: "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." While Facebook keeps all profits from ad revenue, Tsu keeps just 10%; the remaining 90% is shared between users who've created content and the chain of friends who invited said user. CNNMoney has spoken to a dozen Tsu.co users, most of them artists and models who have yet to make any money on the site, but they overwhelmingly agree that Facebook's block is unfair. "I don't believe that Facebook and Instagram want Tsu to go viral," one user from Colombia says. "It would cost them a lot of money." After posting a link to a Tsu.co video on Facebook, for instance, 50 Cent had his mention removed as well, reports the AP. Facebook, meanwhile, says it will lift the block if Tsu no longer allows its users to post simultaneously to Tsu and Facebook. For now, mention Tsu.co and you'll likely be met with this error: "The content you're trying to share includes a link that our security systems detected to be unsafe." (This model recently quit social media altogether.)