Facebook to crack down on groups that break its rules

Facebook said Wednesday that it is changing the way it recommends groups and will limit the reach of those that break its rules, a move that comes amid scrutiny of the platform's propensity to push some of its users to extremism.

The new policies are part of a continued effort to clean up misinformation and harmful content, the company said in a blog post.

"We know we have a greater responsibility when we are amplifying or recommending content," Tom Alison, Facebook's vice president of engineering, said in the post. "As behaviors evolve on our platform, though, we recognize we need to do more."

Under the new rules, which will apply to its tens of millions of active groups, Facebook will show rule-breaking groups lower in the recommendations bar, making them less discoverable to other users. The more rules a group breaks, the more it will increase restrictions until it is removed completely.

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