How to Stop Bot Comments on Your Facebook Ads

Method 1: Filter bots by behaviour with Moderation Assist

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This is the one that actually works on bots, and most advertisers have never opened it. Instead of guessing what a bot will say, you describe what a bot looks like: a week-old account, no photo, no followers, dropping a link. Facebook hides anything matching as it arrives.

1. 1Open Moderation AssistSwitch to your Page and open your professional dashboard. In the left menu, select Moderation Assist and click Let's Go. It is not in Meta Business Suite and not in Ads Manager, which is most of the reason so few advertisers use it.
2. 2Add criteria about the accountGo to Manage Comments and click Add. You can hide comments from accounts less than a week old, accounts with no profile picture, accounts with no friends or followers, and repeat offenders. A real customer usually fails none of these. A bot farm account usually fails three.
3. 3Add the links criteria, and mean itYou can hide comments containing links, links to specific sites, or media like images and video. Under an ad this one rule is worth more than a hundred keywords, because the whole point of an affiliate bot is a click somewhere else. If it cannot post the link, there is nothing in it for whoever ran it.
4. 4Add keywords as a backstopModeration Assist takes your own words and phrases too, and catches the obvious dodges around them: add "spam" and it also catches SPAM, sp4m, s.p.a.m. and spamm. This is your net for bot scripts that carry no link.
5. 5Check the activity log after a dayOpen the activity log to see what got hidden and which rule caught it. Anything Moderation Assist hides waits there rather than being deleted, so a wrongly caught comment costs one click to put back.

Method 2: Add a keyword list in Content Moderation

Your Page has a second, separate keyword list, the one people mean when they say Facebook comment filter. It is worth setting even though Moderation Assist has its own, because it applies across your whole Page and the two lists do not talk to each other.

1. 1Go to your Page settings, not Business SuiteOpen your Facebook Page as an admin and click Settings. Then Privacy, then Public Posts. If you have hunted for this in Meta Business Suite and found nothing, that is why: it is a Page setting and it lives nowhere else.
2. 2Open Content ModerationScroll to the Content Moderation section and click Edit. You get up to 1,000 words, phrases, or emojis, in any language.
3. 3Paste the phrases bots use, not swear wordsBots under ads are not rude. They are salesy. "Message me", "check my page", "free gift", "work from home", "claim your prize", plus whatever your own spam keeps saying. Separate them with commas.
4. 4Save and check what it caughtHidden comments move out of public view rather than disappearing, so open your activity log after a day and see what the list caught and what it caught wrongly.

Method 3: Hide comments from Ads Manager

This is not a filter. It is the only native place to see the comments on an ad that was never published to your Page, which is where the ones you never knew about live.

1. 1Open the ad, not the PageIn Ads Manager, go to the Ads level, tick the ad you want, and open its comments. This is a per ad view, so it is per ad work, every time.
2. 2Hide by hand, then repeatYou can hide, delete, and reply from here. There is no rule, no list, and no criteria on this screen. Comments on an unpublished ad stay tied to that ad, so ten ads means ten comment sections, none of which show up where you normally look.

Where the native rules let bots through

Set all three up. They are free, they take fifteen minutes, and they clear out the crude half of the problem tonight. Then look at what is left, because that is the part costing you customers.

• The good bots do not look like bots

  The ones worth worrying about run aged accounts with a profile picture, a plausible name, and a few hundred friends bought years ago. New account rule: passes. No photo rule: passes. No friends rule: passes. Every criteria you just set waves them through.

• The good bots do not post links

  They post "message me about your order". No link, no profanity, no banned word, nothing to match. It reads as a happy customer to every filter Facebook has, and it reads as your support team to the stranger under your ad, which is the entire point of writing it that way.

• A word list is always one campaign behind

  Your list records the spam you have already seen. Next week's script uses a phrase you never typed, and it works until you notice, open your settings, and add it. Under an ad, "until you notice" is billed by the impression.

• Nothing native reads meaning

  Every rule on this page matches a pattern somebody had to think of first: an account age, a link, a word. None of them read the comment. A sentence can be spotless by every rule and still be a scam aimed at the people you are paying to reach.

• Your ads and your posts are moderated in different places

  Behaviour rules in the professional dashboard, keywords in Page settings, unpublished ad comments only in Ads Manager, Instagram elsewhere entirely. Nobody keeps four screens open while a campaign runs.

None of this makes Facebook's rules bad. It makes them what they are: a good way to catch a bot that was lazy, on the one surface where the bots have a budget to be careful.

When it does not work

• Why are bot comments still appearing after I set up Moderation Assist?

  Usually because the bots pass your criteria. Aged accounts with profile pictures and friends fail none of the account rules, and a comment with no link fails the link rule. Check the activity log to see what your rules are catching. If the answer is almost nothing, the bots hitting you are the careful kind and no criteria on that screen describes them.

• Why can I not find Moderation Assist on my Page?

  It lives in the professional dashboard, not Meta Business Suite and not Ads Manager, and you need to be an admin. Switch to your Page first, then open the professional dashboard and look in the left menu. If you are on a personal profile rather than a Page, it does not exist for you.

• Why does my keyword list not catch comments on my ads?

  Your Page list covers boosted posts, because those are real posts on your Page. An ad built as an unpublished post in Ads Manager never lands on your timeline, and Page level moderation is much less dependable there. Open the ad in Ads Manager and read its comments yourself before assuming they are covered.

• Why is Moderation Assist hiding my real customers?

  Almost always the new account or no profile picture criteria, which describe a genuine new buyer as well as they describe a bot. Open the activity log, see which rule is firing, unhide the good ones, and drop that criteria. The links criteria is safer to leave on, since customers rarely paste a link under an ad.