How to Filter Comments on Facebook

Trying to keep your Facebook comments section productive and positive can feel like a full-time job. With the right tools, however, you can automate much of the process, saving you time and protecting your brand from spam, negativity, and trolls. This guide will walk you through every setting and strategy Facebook provides to filter, hide, and moderate comments on your page effectively.

Why Filtering Comments is More Than Just Deleting Spam

Before we get into the "how," it's helpful to understand the "why." Effective comment moderation isn't about silencing criticism or creating an echo chamber. It's about cultivating a healthy and safe environment where your actual community can thrive. When you let spam, harassment, or relentless negativity run rampant, you're signaling to your genuine followers that their space isn't protected. Good moderation is a form of community management that directly impacts your brand's reputation.

Here’s what it accomplishes:

• Protects Brand Reputation: It prevents your posts from becoming a billboard for scams, abusive language, or links to malicious websites.
• Fosters a Healthy Community: By removing toxic interactions, you make your comments section a place where people feel comfortable engaging.
• Saves Time and Mental Energy: Automating the removal of junk frees you up to engage with real customers and supporters. Automated filters also save your mental energy by protecting you from constant negativity.
• Improves Post Performance: Believe it or not, a clean comments section can encourage more positive, on-topic discussions, which can be a positive signal to Facebook's algorithm.

Your First Line of Defense: Automated Moderation

Facebook’s most powerful tools are its automated filters, primarily found within Meta Business Suite's "Moderation Assist." This feature acts as your 24/7 moderator, automatically hiding comments based on criteria you define. Setting this up is the single biggest step you can take toward a cleaner comments section.

Finding and Setting Up Moderation Assist

You can find these settings in a few different places depending on Facebook's latest interface updates, but this path is the most reliable:

1. Navigate to your Meta Business Suite.
2. From the left-hand menu, select Inbox.
3. In the top right corner of the Inbox, click the Automations button.
4. From here, look for the section titled "Moderation Assist" and click "Edit Criteria" or "Get Started."

Once you're in, you’ll see a menu of filter criteria you can add. Let’s break down the most useful ones.

Hiding Comments with Specific Keywords

This is your bread and butter. The keyword filter lets you create a list of words, phrases, and even emojis that will trigger a comment to be automatically hidden. The comment isn't deleted - it’s just hidden from public view, giving you the chance to review it later.

Under the "Add New Criteria" section in Moderation Assist, you’ll find an option like "Keywords in comment." Here, you can build your blocklist. We recommend starting with a few common categories:

1. Common Spam and Scams

Think about the generic, annoying comments you see everywhere. Your list could include:

• Free followers
• DM for promo
• Forex trading
• Crypto invest
• Check my page
• LINK IN BIO

2. Competitor Mentions

While you might want to see some competitor talk, you probably don't want people using your comment section to advertise for them. Consider adding the names of your direct competitors to prevent your audience from being poached on your own content.

3. Offensive Language and Hate Speech

Even with the profanity filter (more on that next), you should create your own list of slurs, insults, and hateful phrases that are specific to your industry or audience. People get creative trying to bypass filters, so think about common misspellings or variations.

4. Sensitive Customer Service Terms

This one is more strategic. A comment like "My order arrived broken and I want a refund!" is a valid complaint, but it might not be one you want to litigate publicly. By adding terms like refund, broken, scam, or lawsuit, the comment gets hidden automatically. This gives your support team a chance to see it in the moderation queue and respond privately via direct message, resolving the issue without creating a public spectacle. You maintain control of the narrative.

Pro Tip: You can enter these as a comma-separated list, and you can even upload a CSV file if you have a massive list you've built over time.

Using Facebook’s Built-in Profanity Filter

In addition to your custom keyword list, Facebook has its own profanity filter. You can typically find this in the same Moderation Assist area or under your main Page settings (Settings &, Privacy >, Settings >, Public Posts >, Profanity Filter). This tool uses Facebook’s constantly updated list of offensive words and phrases. You generally have two options:

• Medium: Catches the most common "bad words."
• Strong: Is much more aggressive and may catch words that are "borderline" or used in non-offensive contexts.

For most brands, the Medium setting is a good starting point. The Strong filter can sometimes lead to false positives, hiding legitimate comments you'd want to keep.

Blocks Based on Author Criteria

Moderation Assist has become more sophisticated, offering filters that look at who is commenting, not just what they're saying. These are fantastic for weeding out bot accounts and spammers.

• Link in comment: This is a must-use criterion. A huge percentage of malicious or spam comments contain a link. Turn this on to hide them all automatically.
• New account: Hide comments from Facebook profiles created in the last week or two. Brand new accounts are often created for the sole purpose of spamming or trolling.
• No profile picture: While not a perfect indicator, accounts without a profile picture have a higher likelihood of being bots or throwaway accounts. Hiding these can cut down on noise.
• Repeat offender: This automatically hides comments from people who have had a comment or post removed for violating community standards in the past - a very useful feature.

Manual Actions: Hiding vs. Deleting vs. Banning

Automated filters will catch a lot, but some comments will always need a human touch. When you manually moderate, you have three main choices: hide, delete, or ban.

Hiding a Comment

When you hide a comment, it becomes invisible to everyone except the person who wrote it and their friends. This is often the best first step for dealing with simple negativity or angry customers. Why?

• It Prevents Escalation: The original poster doesn't get a notification that their comment was removed, so they don't feel censored. They simply think their comment is being ignored, and they often just move on without a fight.
• It Keeps a Record for You: The comment still exists on your backend, so you can reference it later if needed.

Hide comments that are negative or critical but don't explicitly break your rules.

Deleting a Comment

When you delete a comment, it's gone for good - for everyone, including the original poster. This is a more direct and final action.

Delete comments that are outright spam, contain hate speech, dox someone, or clearly violate Facebook's Terms of Service. There's no reason to keep them around.

Banning a User

Banning a user is the final step. When you ban someone from your page, they can no longer comment, post, or interact with your content at all. They can still see your posts, but their ability to engage is gone.

Reserve banning for repeat offenders. Use it for users who are clearly trolls, are consistently harassing you or other community members, or are relentlessly pushing spam despite having their comments deleted.

Managing Filtered Comments: The Review Queue

Once your automated filters are working, it's important to remember that hidden comments don't just disappear into the ether. They're sent to a moderation queue for you to review.

You can find this queue in your Meta Business Suite Inbox, often under a "Hidden" or "Spam" section. It's smart to check this queue once a day or so. Sometimes, an automated filter will catch a legitimate comment by mistake - a false positive. For example, your filter for the word "broken" might hide a positive comment that says, "I'm so glad my old one finally broke so I had an excuse to buy this!"

By regularly reviewing the queue, you can unhide these genuine comments, approve the poster so their future comments aren't filtered, and confirm that the filters are working as intended.

Final Thoughts

Filtering comments on Facebook is a powerful way to protect your brand, but it requires a thoughtful mix of automated rules and manual oversight. By setting up keyword filters, blocking common spam criteria, and understanding the strategic difference between hiding and deleting, you can create a far more positive and professional space for your real community to engage.

Once your filters are set up, managing the comments that do come through - along with your DMs from every platform - can still be overwhelming. We built Postbase with a unified inbox to solve exactly this problem. Instead of bouncing between Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, you can see and reply to everything in one clean, organized stream, making community management feel simple and manageable again.

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