How To Disable Comments on a Facebook Page

Some Facebook Page administrators would like to disable the ability to comment on posts on their page, yet Facebook does not offer an official documented method of disabling comments on Facebook pages.

Facebook pages with a lot of followers might become chaotic, taking up a lot of the administrator’s time moderating comments. Even though disabling comments isn’t an official feature, here’s a workaround that enables you to effectively disable comments on your Facebook page:

Hiding Comments

Disabling comments on a Facebook page is not something you can do by checking a box but you can hide easily hide comments. If you hide all comments, then you’ve effectively disabled comments on your page.

Facebook doesn’t have such a feature built-in or a “hide all comments” option, though there is a workaround to this common problem.

As a page administrator, you can filter out certain words from appearing in the comments. It involves using a filter, commonly used to filter out profanity or hate speech.

The beauty of this feature is that you can add any word to the list of unwanted words including, for example, some of the most common words that a would-be commenter would have to use. For example, you could add these common words to your filter list such as “the.” I’ll provide a longer list of words to filter in the Tips and Tricks section of this article and some ideas on how to make your filter list fairly comprehensive.

If you do that there’s a high chance that lots of comments won’t show up on your Facebook page. Add a list of common words to your filters and you’ve effectively disabled comments.

Facebook does not limit how many words you get to add to the list, so add every common word you can find (some ideas in the Tips and Tricks section) and profanity using words from a profanity filter list. After you’re satisfied with the words you’ve added, here’s what happens.

Comments containing any of the banned words will appear as ‘…’ for you and for visitors to your Facebook page. The people that posted the comments can still see their own comments, so they don’t know that your page is hiding their comments.

This is useful for two reasons. For one thing, using just a few common words lets you hide most incoming comments, though you will likely want to put a little time into creating a longer list of words to your filter.

Secondly, this feature hides entire comments. Racial slurs or hate speech may still maintain their meaning if just a few bad words are hidden, but you won’t have to worry about that if you use the filter.

If you want to read the comment, you can click on the ‘…’ message and read the original text. You’ll also have the option to allow it or hide from public view, giving you quite a bit of control over what appears on your Facebook page.

How to Use the Filter

1.     Settings

From your Facebook page, you have to locate the page Settings.

2.     Page moderation

From there you go to the General tab. You then locate the section titled Page Moderation. Click on the Edit link.

3.     Keyword List

A box will appear which should already contain some banned words. If it doesn’t, that’s ok. You’ll be adding your own soon.

This is where you can start adding words to the forbidden list. You can type them in or you can upload a .txt file that contains words you want to hide.

Advantages and Disadvantages

The advantage of using the filter to disable comments is that you can keep your page clean and non-controversial.

The downside is that this disables almost all incoming comments if you have a big list of keywords. You can’t disable comments for specific posts only. You’ll have to read comments one after another to decide which ones you want to show.

Another minor downside is that the filter doesn’t work for Facebook groups or personal profile pages.

Tips and Tricks

Now, you may be wondering just what type of words to use. If you want to make sure no comments are shown, just add the most popular or most commonly used words. Keep in mind that Facebook won’t translate them for you.

So, while you may be adding half the Oxford dictionary, the comments written in foreign languages will likely still show up. If you’re running a business page you can filter to certain regions that may prevent the language bypass ability.

Here are some words you should definitely think of using in the filter: the, of, and, in, is, that, not, but, use, he, she, if, etc.

The list is not case-sensitive so you don’t have to bother with capping the first letter of names, countries, etc. Focus on what people use most often when typing. Also, don’t forget to add some commonly used abbreviations.

If you want to spend as little time as possible doing this, you should use premade lists of commonly used words. You could do a web search and quickly find a list of the most common words to add to your list to make it more comprehensive.

Copying some popular profanity filters is also a good idea if you want to be thorough. Don’t rely on Facebook’s integrated profanity filter as there are plenty of clever individuals that can find a way around it with slightly misspelled profane words.

Controlling Who Comments

Another option that is available to you is the ability to block, delete, or remove unwanted commentary from your posts. If you’d like to prevent a specific account from commenting, you can do this as well.

If you’ve ever used Facebook you’re probably familiar with blocking accounts. You can take additional steps to ensure one person is not commenting on your posts. Facebook posts give the option to hide comments once they’re posted by clicking the three horizontal dots next to the comment.

Hiding Posts from People

When you post something on Facebook you’ll have the option to share that content with anyone in the world, the ‘Settings’ allows you to change from Everyone to Friends. The actual post itself gives you the option to choose specific friends to share with or specific friends to hide your posts from.

To hide posts:

1. Click the ‘What’s on your mind?’ box.
   
2. Tap ‘Friends’ in the upper left-hand portion of the box so that a menu drops down.
   
3. Select ‘Friends Except’
   
4. Type in the profile names of the people you’d like to avoid.
   
5. Confirm
   

Your post privacy will remain with these settings until you change them. This not only prevents certain people from commenting but it also stops people from seeing what you post without having to unfriend them.