Facebook on Thursday shut down a massive group with more than 348,000 members that was spreading misinformation about voter fraud.

The public group, called "STOP THE STEAL," was pushing false claims that Democrats are trying to "steal" the US presidential election between Republican President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden. 

"In line with the exceptional measures that we are taking during this period of heightened tension, we have removed the Group 'Stop the Steal,' which was creating real-world events.

Facebook shuts down massive group pushing false election fraud claims https://t.co/whv3j9bHbp

— CNET News (@CNETNews) November 5, 2020

The group was organized around the delegitimization of the election process, and we saw worrying calls for violence from some members of the group," a Facebook spokesperson said in a statement.

Facebook groups are online spaces where people gather to chat about shared interests such as cooking, hiking or parenting, but groups, which can be public or private, have also been filled with misinformation about various topics including the election and the coronavirus.

Civil rights activists were calling on the social network to shut down the Stop the Steal group earlier on Thursday.

The group's membership quickly swelled to hundreds of thousands of members after it was created on Wednesday.

The Center for Countering Digital Hate, which was tracking the group, posted screenshots on Twitter of the Stop the Steal group members calling for violence.

In one post, a group member urged military veterans to join a "fire mission" in battleground states.

Another post stated that it was "Time to clean the guns, time to hit the streets."The group was also asking users to join rallies in Arizona, Georgia, Florida and other states, according to information from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned analytics tool. 

The group also appeared to be anticipating action by Facebook and was asking members to sign up for updates on a separate website.

Members were pushing false claims that Trump had already won the election and that an alleged deep state "froze the election" even though votes are still being counted and a winner has not been called. 

The group was started by a conservative organization called Women for America First, according to an archived page of the Facebook group before it was pulled down.

Women for America First didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.