How to Hide Comments on Facebook Ads

Method 1: Hide ad comments by keyword before anyone reads them

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Your Page has a keyword list. Meta's own advertising guidance says the keywords your Page moderates are hidden from the comments on your ads too, and that your Page's profanity filter setting applies to them as well. So the fastest way to moderate ad comments is a setting that never mentions ads.

1. 1Open your Page settings, not Ads ManagerThis is the step that loses people. The setting is not in Ads Manager and it is not in Meta Business Suite. Go to your Facebook Page as an admin and click Settings in the left sidebar.
2. 2Go to Privacy, then Public PostsInside Settings, open Privacy, then Public Posts. This screen holds every rule about what other people are allowed to leave on your Page, and your ads inherit those rules because the ad runs from your Page.
3. 3Find Content Moderation and click EditScroll down to Content Moderation. If you have hunted for this from the ad side and found nothing, this is why: it is a Page setting, and there is no version of it inside a campaign.
4. 4Add the words your ad comments actually attractType your words and phrases with a comma between each one. Ad comments are their own dialect: the scam vocabulary, the fake support account wording, the competitor's brand name, the rival offers. Do not reuse a generic swearing list and call it done. Any language works, because Facebook matches the characters you typed, and emojis count as words.
5. 5Turn on the profanity filter while you are thereIt sits in the same section and runs Facebook's own list rather than yours. Medium catches what most people would call swearing. Strong reaches further, including into words that were compliments when your customer typed them.
6. 6Save, then go and look at a live adSave your changes, then open one of your running ads and read its comments. Hidden comments do not vanish, they drop out of public view, so this is the only way to learn what your list caught and what it caught by mistake.

Method 2: Hide one ad comment by hand

For the comment your list did not catch. The problem is never the hiding, which takes one click. The problem is that the comment lives somewhere you do not normally go, which is why it was still there when you finally saw it.

1. 1Open Ads Manager and find the adGo to Ads Manager and click Ads in the left sidebar so you are looking at individual ads rather than campaigns or ad sets. Find the one you want to clean up.
2. 2Open the ad's commentsHover the ad and click Edit, then scroll the preview panel on the right down to the comments. Or use Preview and choose Facebook Post with Comments, which opens the ad in a new tab as an ordinary post with its comment section attached.
3. 3Hide the commentHover the comment, click the three dots next to it, and choose Hide comment. It leaves public view straight away. Nobody is notified.
4. 4Then go and hide the same thing tomorrowThis is the honest version of this step. Hiding one comment is a click. Doing it across every live ad, every day, before your buyers read it, is a job.

Where this stops

Both methods are free and both are worth doing today. They also fail in the same two ways, and under an ad each failure has a price attached.

• A keyword list only catches the words you thought of

  It is a record of the spam you have already met. The scam that shows up under Tuesday's ad will use a word that is not on your list, and it will keep working until you notice, open your Page settings, and add it. The list is permanently one incident behind, and the ad is spending the whole time.

• Nothing here reads meaning

  "Great product, message me and I will double your money" has no profanity in it, no banned word, and no link. Every filter Facebook has reads it as a compliment. Your buyer reads it as a scam under your ad, because it is one.

• You cannot hide what you never saw

  This is the one that is specific to ads. Comments on ads often do not appear on your Page timeline, so nothing tells you they exist. There is no notification, no red dot, no post to scroll past. The comment is only visible if you deliberately go and open the ad, which is why the worst reply under your best ad is usually days old.

• The checking does not scale with the spending

  Ten live ads is ten preview panels to open by hand. Your budget scales in one click and your ability to read every comment section does not. Your ads also run all night, spam is posted all night, and the hours between a scam reply going up and you seeing it are billed at your normal rate.

None of this makes Facebook's tools bad. It makes them what they are: a good way to block words you already know about, on comments you have to find yourself, under ads that spend whether or not you found them.

When it does not work

• Why are comments still showing on my ad after I added the keyword?

  Check the basics first. The filter only affects comments posted after you saved the word, so anything already under the ad stays until you hide it by hand. The comment may not contain your exact word, only something near it. And if you typed the word into Meta Business Suite instead of your Page's own Settings, it is not saved where the filter reads from.

• Why can I not find Content Moderation in my Page settings?

  You need to be an admin of the Page rather than an editor, and you need to be in the Page's own Settings, not Ads Manager and not Business Suite. The path is Settings, then Privacy, then Public Posts, then scroll down. Meta moves this screen around, so if it is not there, look for the section about what others can post on your Page.

• Why did my filter hide a comment from a real customer?

  Usually the profanity filter set to strong, which reaches into words that are not swearing in context. Someone saying your product is unbelievably good is a common casualty. Unhide the comment and drop the filter to medium. If it was your own list, look for a short word that hides inside longer innocent ones.