If i hide comment on facebook who can see it

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Facebook has been part of our daily lives for more than 17 years, and it has almost three billion active users. You can now hide other peoples' comments on your own Timeline.

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Facebook is one of the best social media websites for catching up with friends and family.

It's helped people to connect during the coronavirus lockdown, as well as reconnect with long-lost friends.

But, unfortunately, some people may be using Facebook for spreading hate or personal attacks.

As a result, Facebook has now given its users the chance to hide other peoples' comments.

READ MORE: Messenger is down across the UK - Facebook chat app suffers outage

When you hide a comment on Facebook, the comment will remain visible to the person who wrote it and their friends while at the same time it will be hidden for everyone else.

Replies to hidden comments are also hidden.

• The person who wrote it probably won’t find out that their comment was hidden.
• The comment can still be seen by all the friends of the person who wrote it.
• Hiding a comment on Facebook is a reversible action, you can unhide later.
• You can still reply to hidden comments to solve the issue.

When you delete a comment on Facebook, the comment will be removed completely and will no longer visible to the person who wrote it or anyone else. Deleting a comment on Facebook is an irreversible action, you can’t restore a deleted comment later.

• The person who wrote it can see that the comment was deleted.
• Deleting is the only way to make sure a comment no one can see it anymore.
• You can’t reply to deleted comments anymore to solve the issue.

Deleting comments will create a strong feeling of censorship and will often lead to more comments. So be careful when deleting comments and only use it in exceptional cases, preferably when combining the deletion of the comment with a ban of its author.

Banning a user on Facebook

When you ban a user on Facebook, he or she is added to your page blocklist and can’t leave any future comments on your posts or ads anymore.

A blocked user will not get notified when he or she is banned, but will see it because the comment field on your posts isn’t visible to them anymore.

Deleting and banning are very useful for repeat spammers or trolls who are clearly out for a fight, but in most cases hiding a Facebook comment is the better choice.

Now that we’ve discussed the pros and cons of hiding vs deleting comments on Facebook, let’s look at how to actually hide, unhide and delete comments on Facebook.

1. Navigate to a comment that you would like to hide.
2. Click on the small three dot icon next to it to open te drop-down menu.
3. Choose the “Hide comment” option to hide the comment.
4. Alternatively you can click the “Hide” link underneath the comment text.

Comments that have been hidden will be grayed out a bit, so it’s easy to see they were hidden. As mentioned before, hidden comments will still be visible to you, the person who wrote it and their friends. To everyone else it will be invisible.

When you hide a comment all the current and future replies that are nested under this comment, will also be hidden. When hiding a nested comment reply, the parent object (comment) will still remain publicly visible.

1. Navigate to a hidden comment you would like to unhide.
2. Click on the small three dot icon next to it to open the dropdown-menu.
3. Choose the “Unhide comment” option to make the comment visible again.
4. Alternatively you can click the “Unhide” link underneath the comment text.

You can unhide Facebook comments that you’ve accidentally hidden. But you can also use the unhide feature to make a hidden comment publicly visible again after you’ve crafted a reply to it or solved the issue.

1. Navigate to a comment that you would like to delete.
2. Click on the small three dot icon next to it to open the dropdown-menu.
3. Choose the “Delete” option to delete the comment.

When you click on “Delete”, Facebook will ask you if you’re sure you want to delete the comment and will only do so after your explicit confirmation.

How to see all comments on Facebook posts and ads?

It’s important to keep an eye on the comments you receive.

But that can be tricky when you have a large number of posts and ads, because you’ll quickly loose overview when scrolling through your comment notifications.

Alternatively, when looking at your individual posts it’s also easy to miss comments, because Facebook applies sorting to the comments. So the newest ones aren’t always automatically shown at the top.

When you get a new comment on one of the Facebook Pages that you’re an Admin of, you’ll receive a notification. You can filter “All” notifications or just look at “My ads”.

When you receive just a few comments, this might be a good way to keep track of your comments and see all of them. But when you manage multiple pages or get high engagement on your posts & ads you’ll lose sight.

Luckily you can use Facebook’s Page Inbox, by navigating to your Facebook Page and then clicking Inbox in the left sidebar. This opens your Page’s Inbox where you’ll find all your comments on Facebook, Instagram & Messenger.

In the Facebook Page Inbox you’ll be able to see all comments on Facebook posts & ads.

In your Inbox you can quickly see previews of your posts and ads, with the comments underneath it. You can filter or sort the comments in various ways.

To make sure you don’t miss any comments, it’s recommended to select the “All comments” view. You can also change the chronological order (newest or oldest first).

Select “Hidden by this Page” to view all comments that were hidden.

Facebook applies comment ranking on your Facebook page, to highlight “most relevant” comments. This means that comments with the most likes or replies will appear at the top (first ones below your post). The same goes for comments from other verified Facebook Pages and profiles.

If the Comment Ranking checkbox isn’t checked, the most recent comments will be displayed first.

From the perspective of users, it makes sense to have Facebook rank comments to show the most relevant ones first. This will highlight comments with high engagement or the ones coming from credible sources.

But from the perspective of a moderator it can be a double-edged sword. While on the one hand high engagement can provide social proof, on the other hand it’s not necessarily going to be positive engagement.

If your the Admin of a classic Facebook page, you can find the Comment Ranking setting in your page settings (Settings > General > Comment Ranking). If your Facebook page has been moved to the New Pages experience, you can find the Comment Ranking setting via Settings & Privacy > Settings > Privacy > Public Posts.

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

If you don’t want to always be on guard to protect your posts and ads, you can automate (at least some) comment moderation using Facebook’s moderation settings.

1. Facebook’s content moderation feature, which functions like a blacklist and hides comments that contain any of your listed words.
2. Facebook’s profanity filter to automatically hide comments with profanity.

But that’s about it, at least when it comes to Facebook’s native moderation options.

Sadly there isn’t an easy way to completely turn off Facebook comments or review and approve Facebook comments before they’re publicly visible. But luckily there are 3rd-party comment moderation tools that fill the gap by solving these issues.

Let’s start with the options that are natively available on the Facebook platform.

Facebook page moderation word list

Facebook allows administrators of pages to add a list of keywords, phrases or emojis that will be filtered. When a comment is posted that contains anything on this “blacklist”, the comments will automatically be hidden to anyone except the authors and their friends.

While this is a useful moderation feature, our tests showed that not all variations of keywords are detected. And more importantly, “internet slang” isn’t understood either.

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

Facebook profanity filter

Next to the keyword list for comment moderation, Facebook also has a profanity filter.

When activating the profanity filter, Facebook will automatically hide comments that contain profanity. They will use a list of the most commonly reported offensive words and phrases for that. Sadly, the filter supports only English profanity, no other languages.

Next to that our Facebook profanity filter test showed that some of our more creative ways to introduce profanity (“fck yrslf” and “effing stupid”) were not hidden.

Next to Facebook’s native tools for comment moderation there are 3rd-party solutions like CommentGuard, the #1 Facebook & Instagram comment moderation tool.

It offers AI profanity filtering in 15 languages (which also supports internet slang) and smart filters to hide: images, GIFs, URLs, specific Emojis and blacklisted keywords.

You can even hide ALL comments when activating “private mode”.

When using our software, you can: see all your comments (organic and paid) in one place, auto-hide inappropriate language and spam, re-use saved replies or even send auto-replies, and collaborate without sharing access to your social media accounts with others.

It’s fully approved by Facebook and Instagram and works like a charm.

Conclusion

In this guide we’ve covered the why, how and when to hide comments on Facebook.

By now you know why hiding comments on Facebook is important, the types of comments that you should always hide, what happens when you hide a comment and who will still be able to see it. We’ve also discussed the pros and cons of hiding vs deleting comments, and banning users.

And finally I’ve showed you how to hide and delete Facebook comments manually, partially automated using Facebook’s profanity filter and moderation word list, and fully automated using 3rd-party moderation software like CommentGuard.

To conclude this guide we’d like to reiterate that the “social” nature of Facebook as a marketing platform, can be a double-edged sword.

Engagement in the comment section can create social proof and build brand reputation, but it can also turn into a toxic environment that hurts your business. That’s why it is vital to be proactive when it comes to Facebook comment moderation!