SAN FRANCISCO — 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 one of the Internet’s most powerful companies and Tsu began in late September when Facebook removed nearly 10 million posts containing links and other references to Tsu (pronounced “soo”).

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.”

Tsu CEO Sebastian Sobczak contends Facebook hoped to destroy an upstart trying to popularize the idea that people should get paid for posts that help sell advertising. Facebook has built a highly profitable company with a market value of $300 billion, partly because it doesn’t pay for the material that keeps people and advertisers coming to its social network.

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.

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