How to Write a Social Media Comment Policy for Facebook and Instagram

Most published comment policies are bad in the same way: they list what is forbidden and stop, which only says who you are willing to silence. A policy that works says what you hide, what you never hide, and what happens to a hidden comment.

1. 1Name what you hide, in plain wordsSpam and scams. Links to somewhere that is not you. People pulling your customers into a private chat. Accounts pretending to be your support team. Abuse aimed at you or anyone else in the thread. Personal information, including phone numbers somebody posted about themselves without thinking. Write it as a list, not a paragraph.
2. 2Say what you never hide, and mean itThe line the whole policy rests on. Honest criticism stays up. A complaint about an order stays up. Disagreeing with you is not a reason to be hidden. Every policy lists what gets removed, and almost none say what is protected. That sentence is the only part a sceptical reader will believe.
3. 3Say what happens, because people assume the worstA hidden comment is not deleted. It still shows to whoever wrote it and to their friends, and nobody is banned for disagreeing. Then say what to do if you got it wrong: message you, and you will look again. That last sentence costs nothing and defuses most arguments before they start.
4. 4Cut every line you will not honourRead it back as a promise, because that is what it is now. If it says criticism is welcome and you hide criticism, you have published the evidence against yourself. Delete anything aspirational. A shorter policy you keep beats a thorough one you break.
5. 5Make it sound like your other postsChange a few words so it reads like you wrote it rather than found it. Stiff corporate voice on a Page that otherwise posts like a human reads as copied, which tells people you have not thought about any of this.

A policy nobody can find does nothing. The entire value is pointing at it in one link, and that only works if the link exists somewhere obvious before the argument starts.

1. 1Pin it to the top of your Facebook PagePost it as a normal post, then open the three dots on the post and choose Pin to top of Page. It sits above everything else you publish, which is exactly where a rule belongs.
2. 2Put a short version in your About sectionTwo or three lines. The About section is where people go when they are checking whether you are real, and unlike a pinned post it does not scroll out of memory.
3. 3Use your bio or a highlight on InstagramInstagram has no pinned text post. What works is a link in your bio, a story highlight called Comment Policy, or a pinned comment on your most viewed post. None are as good as Facebook's pin, so pick one and stick with it.
4. 4Save the link where you type fromThe policy earns its keep only if you can paste the link in ten seconds instead of hunting for it while annoyed.

A policy applied selectively is worse than no policy, and that is not a slogan. Without one, your moderation is merely unmeasured. With one, every inconsistency is measurable against something you published yourself.

1. 1Hide the things on the list, all of themIf your policy says you hide links and you leave a friendly commenter's link up, the rule was never a rule. That is the one somebody screenshots next to the comment of theirs you did hide.
2. 2Leave up what you promised to leave upThe hardest ten seconds in moderation is the honest one star complaint under an ad you paid for. Leave it. Answer it in public. Hiding it turns a fixable problem into a chargeback and a review somewhere you do not control.
3. 3Give everyone who moderates the same rulesIf more than one person touches the comments, the policy is the difference between consistent moderation and whoever happened to be online. Send them the link, not a description.
4. 4Revise it when something new shows upThe first genuinely strange comment will not be on your list. Add it, quietly, and carry on. A policy is a starting point you edit, not a thing you defend forever.

Where a comment policy stops

A policy is one of the highest value things you can do in fifteen minutes, and it will still not hide a single comment. The gap between those two halves is where the damage happens.

• It is words on a page and it has no switch

  A policy hides nothing. Every rule in it describes an action somebody still has to take, one comment at a time, forever.

• The spammers have not read it

  The account posting crypto bait under your ad will not see your pinned post and reconsider. Your policy is a message to your real audience about how you behave, not one the bad actors will ever receive.

• A promise you keep at 9am and break at 2am is not a promise

  The policy is a commitment to be consistent, and consistency around the clock is exactly what one person cannot do, because a person sleeps and a comment section does not. The overnight gap is not a discipline problem. It is a biology problem.

• It publishes the standard you can be measured against

  The honest cost of writing one. Before, your moderation was inconsistent and nobody could prove it. Now there is a document, and the day you hide something your own policy protects, somebody will put the two side by side.

• It cannot make the judgement call

  The hard part was never the rule. It is whether this angry comment is a troll or a customer having a bad week, and no policy decides that for you.

So the policy is the promise, and it is worth making. What it needs next is something that keeps the promise while you are not looking.

When it does not work

• Why is nobody reading my pinned policy?

  Almost nobody reads it in advance, and that is fine, because that was never the job. It is not a leaflet, it is a reference you point at afterwards. Judge it by whether the link ends the argument in one reply, not by how many people opened it.

• Why did someone accuse me of censorship anyway?

  Check whether you hid something your policy protects. If you did, unhide it and say so, because that is recoverable and defending it is not. If you did not, reply once with the link and the line it breaks, then stop. You are writing for everyone else reading the thread, not for the angry person.

• Why do the same rules get applied differently on different days?

  Because a person is applying them, and people are tired, busy, or asleep. Split the policy in two. The mechanical half about spam, scams, and links can be handled by a keyword list or by our AI model with nobody deciding anything. The judgement half stays with you. Being consistent about both, by hand, around the clock, is the part that never holds.