The cushy revenue model that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter have made billions of dollars of off might end soon, but not without a fight.

Tsu.co, a social media site that gives its users 90 percent of its advertising revenue, could change social media drastically. The only problem is it can’t gain popularity via Facebook because the company is blocking any mentions of Tsu, according to Wired. And that’s an understatement. Facebook is actually blackballing the site by warning users links to the site are “unsafe” and by making it so you can’t even send Tsu.co to someone in a message.

Facebook, with its 1.55 billion monthly users, has the power to influence which companies are successful and which are not. That fact should be unnerving for not only its competitors, but for everyone.

Part of Facebook’s ethos is that it “gives people the power to share and make the world more open.” It says so right in the company’s mission statement. The problem with following through with such a statement is that it gives people, and therefore companies, the power to share and make the world more open with the help of Facebook.

For 99.9 percent of companies, that’s not a problem for Facebook because they aren’t competitors; for that .01 percent, however, it creates a dilemma.

This is where Tsu comes in. Part of how Tsu works is that users have to be invited to the site in order to gain access. Once a user joins, they become a part of the inviter’s network. So, if the new user posts content and gets advertisement money, the person who invited them also gets a piece of the pie. Tsu takes a 10 percent cut of everything, but then the 90 percent is divided between the inviter and the user, according to the company’s website.

This information is important because it’s part of the reason Facebook says it is blocking Tsu. Naturally, the more friends one invites, the more money they will get from various invitees. Tsu gives you the option to invite people through Facebook, so Tsu users did just that until Facebook shut them down for what the site said was spam, according to Wired.

It’s been a messy back and forth, especially with Tsu CEO Sebastian Sobczak repeatedly refuting Facebook’s claims and saying Tsu users are doing nothing wrong.

Regardless, this brings up a major quandary: How should Facebook proceed when it comes to competitors? The answer is easy: it should follow its own damn mission statement.

Facebook has tried to cultivate a line of thinking that it is here to make the world better, and while it certainly has done that, it’s no angel. No company is, but most companies don’t have more than one billion people using their site every day.

The real problem here is that Facebook is so big and so powerful that it is essentially picking and choosing who or what gets publicity. The trending section is a perfect example of that. One would think that a story on this topic should probably be one of the trending articles under “Science and Technology,” but it doesn’t. Instead it shows a slew of others, including a story with a headline stating, “Couple Says They Found Black Widow Spider in Grapes.”

This isn’t surprising, but it is revealing. This is a company that is trying to become the only social media app anyone ever needs, with ventures into virtual reality, disappearing messages and a new app called Notify. If Facebook does in fact conquer the world, it will hold the power to decide whether or not companies like Tsu receive publicity.

How this situation with Tsu plays out will be indicative of how Facebook will likely go about similar situations in the future. Regardless, I’m uncomfortable with the amount of power this company holds. You should be, too.

Paul Sarconi is a junior broadcast and digital journalism major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at pjsarcon@syr.edu and followed on Twitter @paulsarconi.

Published on November 17, 2015 at 9:14 pm