By Jeff Horwitz

Facebook Inc. introduced new penalties for interest-based forums called Groups that are flagged for violating its community standards, as it aims to curb a product that played a high-profile role in the protests that led up to the Capitol riot.

"Groups and members that violate our rules should have reduced privileges and reach," Facebook Vice President of Engineering Tom Alison said in a blog post Wednesday. The changes come after Facebook's own researchers found that the company's oversight of the product was weak.

Groups forums are often private, but can attract millions of users. Facebook has heavily promoted them to users, and more than half of the platform's 2.8 billion monthly active users belong to at least five.

The penalties formalize some of the restrictions placed on the product in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack.

The company will also stop recommending political and health-related groups to countries outside of the U.S. It currently only restricts such recommendations to U.S. users.

"We're trying to look at instances where administrators are trying to create unhealthy groups," Mr. Alison said.

The changes come after internal Facebook research found that Facebook Groups had been widely used to promote election-related conspiracies such as the "Stop the Steal" effort that preceded the Capitol riot.

Other social networks have been cracking down on misinformation on their platform. Twitter Inc. has introduced a strike system that penalizes users who post misleading information on such topics like the Covid-19 vaccine and election integrity.

Facebook recently concluded that some of its largest civic groups were toxic and was alarmed by its growth, according to Internal documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

(More to Come)

Write to Jeff Horwitz at Jeff.Horwitz@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 17, 2021 11:45 ET (15:45 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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