Hide Facebook Comments: The Ultimate Guide (2023)

Look no further, this is the ultimate guide on how to hide comments on Facebook.

If you're responsible for managing a Facebook Page or Facebook Ads, you already know the important role engagement plays on the platform. After all, it is a "social" media platform.

Likes, shares, and comments can provide the social proof that convinces potential buyers.

However, the lack of such evidence or the nature of these comments can also pose a serious risk to your click-through rates, sales conversion, and brand reputation.

While Facebook says it works hard to moderate content on its platform, the options it gives users to automatically moderate comments are very limited.

Basically, we can easily remove or hide comments on Facebook.

Before you start hiding or removing all those spam comments, you must first define a strategy for moderating comments on Facebook posts and ads. This includes things like: the types of comments to hide or delete, when to hide, delete or block them, and much more.

This Ultimate Guide to Hide Facebook Comments is our attempt to help you create your own Facebook comment moderation strategy by answering common questions like:

• What really happens when you hide a comment on Facebook?
• Is it better to hide or delete spam comments on Facebook?
• How to see and sort all your Facebook comments so you don't miss any?
• What options are there to automatically hide Facebook comments?

Let's dive in.

Why should you hide comments on Facebook?

Facebook is a social platform where users interact with content posted by their friends.

But also with the content that companies publish on their Facebook page. Or with the advertising they use to promote their products and services. These posts and announcements inevitably attract responses from the comments.

Depending on your brand and the content of the post, these responses can be positive, neutral, or negative.

Positive or neutral comments can be compliments and questions. Negative feedback includes legitimate concerns and complaints from dissatisfied customers. But also bad words and spam.

There is no single approach to Facebook comment moderation, but in general, all comments require a quick response.

Why do you ask?

Because these comments are public and can be seen by other people who review your Facebook post or your ad in their feed. Unanswered questions or concerns don't make your business look good. Neither does unmoderated spam in your comment section.

Consumer research backs this up by consistently showing the (negative) impact reviews can have on sales conversions and brand reputation:

• Brightlocal's Consumer Review Survey showed thatNegative reviews stop 40% of shoppers from spending money on a business(Those).
• Vendasta even wrote this86% of potential customers are hesitant to buy from a business with negative online reviews.. This introduces delays that can lengthen the sales cycle and opens up opportunities for consumers to research competitors and rivals (Those).
• Studies conducted by the public relations firm Edelman have shown this.47% of 33,000 respondents believe that comments near a brand's advertising and marketing are an indication of that brand's values.. make the situation worse; 48% said it's the brand's fault if their ads appear alongside hateful, violent, or sexually inappropriate comments (Those).

Your potential customers view comments as an integral part of your posts or ads and use all the information (including comments) to decide whether or not they trust your business enough to make a purchase.

While you shouldn't hide negative comments just because you don't like being criticized, you should definitely hide potentially harmful comments.

If you don't, the comment section under your posts or announcements will be full of things that will not only make your business look unprofessional, but actually hurt your business!

Types of comments to hide on Facebook

Social media is all about transparency and public visibility.

While negative reviews make a bad first impression, companies that deal with criticism publicly can also build trust.

Hiding comments on Facebook can be tempting, but it's not always the right thing to do. First of all, you should not leave potentially harmful unmoderated comments.

People want to feel heard. Therefore, you should always be proactive and respond to comments, questions, and complaints. Failing to do so creates the image of a relentless brand that puts customer needs at the bottom of its priority list. It doesn't matter if the commenter is right or wrong, he must act quickly.

Hide a comment to give them a little more time to respond, let people know they'll be contacted via private message, or raise the issue directly and publicly.

Any business expert will tell you about one of the most important aspects of building a loyal customer base: turning bad experiences into great experiences.

Most of the time, these situations are due to misunderstanding or human error. In either case, companies can cultivate a lifelong customer relationship by taking bold steps and working with the customer to achieve a result.

When issues are resolved transparently on Facebook, it can all be done publicly, giving you the opportunity to further your customer service skills.

But… the above only applies to relevant comments, not to spam, trolls and other garbage.

If you receive comments that are not offensive but have nothing to do with your business or the content of the post, simply ignore them. If you want to keep your comments section clean, you can hide these types of comments to limit their public visibility or remove them entirely.

There are a few types of Facebook comments that you should always hide or delete:

• Inappropriate language and hate speech: Anything that is overtly racist, sexist, homophobic, or contains the words "$&#^%%*#" and other explicit content is not worth your attention. This applies to both comment text and images or GIFs attached to comments.
• Spam and self-promotion: Most active Facebook ads attract spam responses from people trying to hijack the ad and send some of the traffic to their own listings. Spam comments often contain links to referral programs or just promotional links from competitors in your niche.
• Offending:Comments that are completely irrelevant to your post or announcement and come from obvious internet trolls. These people have a lot of time and as the saying goes..."don't feed the troll".

What happens when you hide a comment on Facebook?

When you "hide" a comment on your Facebook posts or ads, you limit the reach and visibility of that comment. The comment is still visible to you, the person who wrote it, and their friends.

But everyone else who sees your post or ad won't see the hidden comments.

Will anyone know if your comment is hidden on Facebook?

If you hide comments, you may wonder if the person who wrote them will find out if you hide the comment. The short answer is: probably not.

Facebook doesn't notify commenters that you've hidden their comment, so in most cases they'll never know. The only way for them to check if you have hidden the comment is to log out and revisit the post to see if the comment is publicly visible or not.

Hide or remove comments and ban users

Clicking on the three dots next to a Facebook comment will open a menu where you can delete the comment, show and hide it, or report it to Facebook. Also, sometimes you can find a small link in the comment itself to ban the user who wrote it.

Let's take a closer look at the options available to us.

Hide a comment on Facebook

Hiding a comment on Facebook keeps the comment visible to the person who wrote it and their friends, and hides it from everyone else.

Replies to hidden comments are also hidden.

• The person who wrote it probably won't know that their comment was hidden.
• The comment is still visible to all friends of the author.
• Hiding a comment on Facebook is a reversible action that you can show later.
• You can still reply to hidden comments to resolve the issue.

Delete a comment on Facebook

When you delete a comment on Facebook, the comment is completely deleted and is not visible to the person who wrote it or anyone else. Deleting a comment on Facebook is an irreversible action, you cannot recover a deleted comment later.

• The author can see that the comment has been deleted.
• Deleting it is the only way to ensure that no one can see a comment again.
• You can no longer reply to deleted comments to resolve the issue.

Deleting comments creates a strong sense of censorship and often leads to more comments. Therefore, be careful when deleting comments and use it only in exceptional cases, ideally if you combine deleting a comment with blocking its author.

Ban a user on Facebook

If you block a user on Facebook, they will be added to your Page block list and you will no longer be able to comment on their posts or ads.

A blocked user will not receive a notification if they are blocked, but they will see it because the comment box on their posts will no longer be visible to them.

Delete and block is very useful for recurring spammers or trolls who are clearly willing to fight, but in most cases, hiding a Facebook comment is a better option.

How do I hide, show and delete comments on Facebook?

Now that we have discussed the pros and cons of hiding or deleting comments on Facebook, let's see how to hide, show and delete comments on Facebook.

how to hide comments on facebook

1. Navigate to a comment you want to hide.
2. Click on the little three-dot icon next to it to bring up the menu.
3. Select the Hide Comment option to hide the comment.
4. Alternatively, you can click the "Hide" link below the comment text.

Comments that have been hidden will appear slightly grayed out so it's easy to see that they've been hidden.

As mentioned above, hidden comments are still visible to you, the person who wrote them, and your friends. These comments are invisible to everyone else.

Show comments on Facebook

1. Navigate to a hidden comment that you want to show.
2. Click on the little three-dot icon next to it to bring up the menu.
3. Select the Show Comment option to make the comment visible again.
4. Alternatively, you can click the "Show" link below the comment text.

You can show Facebook comments that you accidentally hid. However, you can also use the unhide function to make a hidden comment publicly visible again after you reply to it or resolve the issue.

how to delete comments on facebook

1. Navigate to a comment you want to delete.
2. Click on the little three-dot icon next to it to bring up the menu.
3. Select the Delete option to delete the comment.

If you click "Delete", Facebook will ask you if you really want to delete the comment and will only do so after your explicit confirmation, as this process cannot be undone.

How can I see all comments on Facebook posts and ads?

It is important to keep track of the feedback you receive.

But this can be tricky when you have a large number of posts and ads, as it's easy to get lost scrolling through the endless stream of Facebook comment notifications.

Alternatively, you can easily ignore comments when looking at individual posts, since Facebook uses a rating on comments. Therefore, the most recent ones are not always automatically displayed at the top.

When you receive a new comment on one of the Facebook Pages you're an admin of, you'll receive a notification. You can filter notifications from "All" or view only notifications from "My Ads".

If you only get a few comments, this can be a good way to keep track of your comments and see all of them. But when you manage multiple pages or get a lot of feedback, you quickly lose track.

Fortunately, you can use Facebook Inbox by navigating to your Facebook page and clicking Inbox in the left sidebar. This will open an inbox where you will find all your comments received on Facebook, Instagram and Messenger.

In the Facebook page inbox, you can see all the comments on Facebook posts and ads.

In your inbox, you can quickly preview your posts and announcements with the comments below. You can filter or sort the comments in several ways.

To make sure you don't miss any comments, it's a good idea to select the "All Comments" view. You can also change the chronological order (newest or oldest first).

Select "Hidden from this page" to show all hidden comments.

Facebook Comment Ranking

Facebook applies comment ranking to your Facebook page to highlight the "most relevant" comments.

This means that the comments with the most likes or responses appear at the top (the first ones below your post). The same applies to comments from other verified Facebook pages and profiles.

If the Comment Order check box is not selected, the most recent comments are displayed first.

From a user perspective, it makes sense to sort Facebook comments to show the most relevant ones first. This highlights comments that are heavily involved or come from trusted sources. But from a moderator's point of view, it can be a double-edged sword.

While on the one hand, high engagement can provide social proof, on the other hand, it doesn't necessarily have to be positive engagement.

How do I turn off Facebook comment grading?

If you are the admin of a classic Facebook page, you can find the comment rating settings in your page settings (Settings > General > Feedback Rating).

If your Facebook Page has been migrated to the New Pages experience, you can find the comment rating settings aboveSettings and privacy > Settings > Privacy > Public posts.

Automatically hide comments on Facebook

Facebook offers limited options to automatically hide comments based on their content.

If you don't want to be on guard all the time to protect your posts and ads, you can automate comment moderation (at least partially) with Facebook's moderation settings.

1. Facebook's content moderation feature, which works like a keyword blacklist and hides comments that contain any of the blacklisted words.
2. Facebook profanity filterAutomatically hide obscene comments.

But that's about it, at least as far as Facebook's native moderation options are concerned.

Unfortunately, there is no easy way to be complete.Disable Facebook commentsor check andApprove Facebook Commentsbefore they are publicly visible. But luckily, there are third-party comment moderation tools that bridge the gap by solving these problems and automating comment moderation using machine learning.

Let's start with the options available natively on the Facebook platform.

Facebook Page Moderation Word List

Facebook allows Page admins to add a list of keywords, phrases, or emojis to be filtered.

When a new comment is posted that contains something under this "blacklist" keyword, the comments are automatically hidden from everyone except the authors and their friends.

While this is a useful moderation feature, our tests have shown that not all keyword variations are recognized. And, more importantly, creative spelling and "internet slang" is also not understood.

You can use this feature to block specific words on Facebook, but it's far from perfect.

Facebook profanity filter

In addition to the list of keywords for comment moderation, Facebook also has a built-in profanity filter.

If you turn on the profanity filter, Facebook will automatically hide comments that contain profanity. They do this by using a list of the most commonly reported offensive words and phrases.

Unfortunately, the filter only supports profanity in English, not other languages.

next to oursFacebook profanity filter testshowed that some of our more creative methods of introducing profanity ("fck yrslf" and "stupid effing") were not recognized by this filter and were hidden.

CommentGuard: moderation software for Facebook and Instagram

In addition to Facebook's native tools for automatic comment moderation, there are third-party solutions like CommentGuard, our.

• toxicity:auto-hidingComments that readers find toxic (rude, disrespectful, or unreasonable). This filter supports 12 different languages.
• blasphemy:Automatically hide comments containing profanity, including the most creative spelling. Again in 12 different languages, not just English.
• URL:Automatically hides comments that contain spam URLs.
• Photos:Automatically hide comments that contain images, videos, or GIFs.
• emojis:Auto hide comments containing all emoji or specific ones.
• Keywords:Automatically hide comments that contain keywords, such as the names of your competitors.

You can even hide all new comments if you enable "private mode".

when you usefeedback guard, you can: see all your comments (both organic and paid) across all your pages in one place, auto-hide comment spam 24/7, and speed up your workflow with saved replies, auto responses based on trigger keywords, bulk filters and actions, and much more.

It is fully backed by Facebook and Instagram and works like a charm.

If you want to give it a try, you can do it risk-free with our 7-day free trial (no credit card required).

Diploma

In this guide, we cover why, how, and when to hide comments on Facebook.

Now you know why it's important to hide comments on Facebook, what types of comments you should always hide, what happens when you hide a comment, and who can still see it.

We also discuss the pros and cons of hiding versus removing comments and banning users.

And finally, I showed you how to hide and delete Facebook comments manually, partially automated with Facebook's profanity filter and moderation word list, and fully automated with third-party comment moderation software likefeedback guard.

To close this guide, we want to reiterate that the “social” nature of Facebook as a marketing platform can be a double-edged sword. Engaging in the comments section can create social proof and build brand reputation, but it can also become a toxic environment that hurts your business.

That's why it's important to be proactive when it comes to moderating Facebook comments!