This week, Facebook announced that it will begin cracking down even harder on Groups that break its rules, and will act to reduce the visibility of the content they share. It’s the latest move in a series of changes intended to stop the spread of hate speech, harassment and misinformation.

According to Facebook, when a Group gets in trouble for violating the platform’s community standards, it will now be shown lower in users’ recommendations. When users try to join these Groups, they will also be shown a notification warning them to reconsider. Even current members of offending Groups will begin to see less of their content. All of this adds up to a comprehensive effort to limit the effect of bad actors.

“We don’t believe in taking an all-or-nothing approach to reduce bad behavior on our platform,” Facebook vice president of engineering Tom Alison said in a statement. “Instead, we believe that groups and members that break our rules should have their privileges and reach reduced, and we make these consequences more severe if their behavior continues — until we remove them completely. We also remove groups and people without these steps in between when necessary in cases of severe harm.”

It isn’t yet clear if these policies will make a meaningful difference in the experience of the platform — but at least Facebook is willing to try new things to clean itself up.

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