Facebook and Instagram Tools for Comment Management

Facebook and Instagram can help you foster community with your constituents, voters and supporters, and engaging with and replying to comments is a great way to do that. We also understand that not all comments left on your Facebook Page or Instagram account promote meaningful conversation, or may violate our Community Standards. As an admin on a Facebook Page or an Instagram account, you have access to a variety of tools to help you manage your comments.*

Engage with and reply to comments

Interact with your citizens, voters and supporters by asking them questions, answering theirs and demonstrating that you are paying attention to their concerns.

• Regularly monitor your Page activity for comments and questions that need attention.
• Like and reply to comments whenever possible.
• Respond to comments on your Page honestly and fairly. Responses to individual comments build trust over time and show that you are listening.
• Enable the Top Fan Badge to identify your most active followers. Learn more about the control you have with the badge in our blog.

Manage your comments

Facebook

In your Facebook Page Settings, you can:

• Turn on the profanity filterto block different degrees of profanity from appearing on your Page. We determine what to block by using the most commonly reported words and phrases marked offensive by the community.
• Turn on Page Moderationto block posts or comments containing the words, phrases or emojis you manually enter. When people include a word you've blocked in a post or comment on your Page, it won't appear on your Page.
• Turn on comment rankingso that comments with the most likes or replies as well as comments from friends or verified profiles and Pages will appear at the top by default. If you've turned off comment ranking for your Page, your Page will display comments chronologically by default.

After posting to your Facebook Page, you can manage comments by:

• Limiting the people and Pages who can comment on each of your organic posts
• Hiding or deleting a comment from a post on your Facebook Page. When you hide a comment from a post on your Page, the comment will only be visible to the person who wrote it and their friends. When you delete a comment from a post on your Page, the comment will be permanently removed from the post.
• Reporting a comment if it doesn't follow the Facebook Community Standards.

You can set expectations about the type and tenor of conversations you want to see on your Page, which can easily be done in a post pinned to your Page.

Instagram

In your Instagram account settings, here are some tools you will find:

• Allow comments from: allow comments at a variety of levels: everyone, people you follow and your followers, people you follow, or your followers.
• Block comments from: choose specific accounts to restrict comments from. People won’t be notified when you block them and any new comments they make on your posts and stories won’t be visible to anyone but them
• Hide offensive comments: automatically hide comments that may be offensive from your posts and stories.
• Manual filter: hide comments that contain specific words or phrases from your posts and stories. Specifically, you can choose words or phrases, and we will hide the comments that contain those words or phrases. Additionally you can choose to filter most reported words to hide comments that contain words or phrases that are most commonly reported on your posts and stories.
• Restricted Accounts: protect yourself from unwanted interactions without having to block or unfollow people you know. Only you and the person you restrict will see their new comments on your posts.

After posting to your Instagram account, you can manage comments individually by:

• Turning off commentingto prevent people from commenting on an individual post. When you turn off commenting, any comments that are currently on your post will be hidden, and if you turn commenting back on for a post, previous comments will be restored and people will be able to comment again. You can also turn off commenting for a post before you share it. On the screen where you add a caption or location to your post, tap Advanced Settings, then tap Turn Off Commenting.
• Deleting multiple comments, block and restrict multiple accounts at the same time on your Instagram posts.
• Reporting comments for abuse or spam if you see comments that aren't following our Community Guidelines.

*There may be restrictions on the ability of government or political officials to take these actions pursuant to applicable laws and regulations. Please consult with your ethics or legal counsel if you have questions.