How to Delete Comments on Instagram and Why You Should Hide Them Instead

Receiving harmful comments on Instagram is a common challenge for brands managing social engagement at scale. While deleting these comments is one option, hiding them is typically the more strategic choice. Here's why hiding comments protects your brand reputation while preserving valuable data and avoiding potential backlash.

Key Takeaways

• Hide, Don't Delete: Hiding comments is preferred because it prevents user backlash; the commenter can still see their post, but the public cannot.

• No Notifications: Instagram does not notify users when you delete or hide their comments.

• Native Limitations: The Instagram app allows you to automatically hide comments based on keywords and manually hide individual comments, but it is not designed for high-volume moderation workflows.

• Preserve Data: Hiding comments keeps the data available for brand records, whereas deleting is permanent and irreversible.
  
  

Instagram remains one of the most engagement-rich channels for brands: Rival IQ’s 2025 benchmark puts median engagement at 0.36% across industries, ahead of Facebook and X. But more engagement also means higher comment volumes, and greater exposure to spam, harmful content, and reputation risks that require proactive moderation.

Instagram's high engagement rate creates both opportunity and operational challenges. While engagement drives brand awareness and customer relationships, it also exposes brands to harmful comments, spam, offensive content, and potential reputation risks that require consistent monitoring and moderation.

When harmful or unwanted comments appear, you have two primary options: deleting or hiding. Understanding the operational and strategic differences between these approaches will help you protect your brand while maintaining community trust and preserving valuable engagement data.

How to delete comments on Instagram

Instagram gives you two built-in ways to remove comments from your posts: you can delete a single comment directly from the comment thread, or you can open Manage comments from the post to select multiple comments and Hide, Delete, or Report them at once. On mobile, deleting a single comment typically means swiping left on or tapping and holding until the trash icon appears.

• Will the person be notified that their comment was deleted?
  No. Instagram will not send a notification to that person when you delete a comment on your post.
• Will the person be able to see their comment was deleted?
  Yes. If the user revisits the post, their comment will be gone, and they will notice it has been removed.
• Can you undelete an Instagram comment?
  No. After you delete a comment, no one  (including the initial poster) will ever be able to access it again.

Why hiding comments on Instagram is better than deleting them

Hiding is usually safer for your brand than deleting because users do not receive a notification or realize their comment is hidden. When people see their comment has vanished, they can feel censored and may lash out. That’s why we always recommend hiding harmful comments, not deleting them. Deleting can therefore backfire because:

1. Users can detect when their comments are deleted, which may trigger negative reactions and escalated responses that further damage brand sentiment and increase moderation workload.
2. All the details in the comment can’t be recovered, making it much more challenging for brands to follow up if needed.
3. You can't respond to this deleted comment and try to repair the relationship with the user.
4. You’re potentially erasing insightful data that can help you later understand why a post didn’t resonate.
   

For these reasons, hiding comments is the recommended approach for most moderation scenarios. It protects your brand reputation, preserves engagement data, and maintains the option to respond if needed, all while keeping harmful content out of public view.

How to hide comments on Instagram

You can hide comments by turning on Instagram’s built-in options: Hidden Words for automatic filtering, Hide unwanted comments in comment settings for broader filtering sensitivity, and Restrict for quietly hiding comments from one specific person.

Use Hidden Words to automatically filter comments

If you want Instagram to catch offensive or spammy comments before they appear publicly, Hidden Words is the easiest place to start. You can rely on Instagram’s default filter, and you can also add your own custom words, phrases, numbers, or emojis to hide.

Steps to follow:

1. Open Instagram and go to your profile.
   
2. Tap the menu in the top-right corner.
   
3. Go to Settings and activity.
   
4. Open Hidden Words.
   
5. Turn on the built-in filter for unwanted or offensive comments.
   
6. Add your own custom words, phrases, numbers, or emojis if you want to filter specific terms.

Use “Hide unwanted comments” in Comment settings

This option helps you automatically hide comments Instagram thinks may be offensive, spammy, or inappropriate. In some versions of the app, you can also adjust the sensitivity so Instagram hides more or some of these comments.

Steps to follow:

1. Open Instagram and go to your profile.
   
2. Tap the menu in the top-right corner.
   
3. Go to Settings and activity.
   
4. Tap Comments.
   
5. Turn on Hide unwanted comments.
   
6. If available, choose the level that best fits your needs, such as a lighter or stronger filter.
   

Restrict a specific person’s comments

If the problem is one person rather than lots of general spam, Restrict is the better option. When you restrict someone, their comments are hidden from everyone else by default unless you choose to approve them.

Steps to follow:

1. Go to the person’s Instagram profile.
   
2. Tap the three dots in the top-right corner.
   
3. Select Restrict.
   
4. Confirm your choice.

How to hide specific comments on Instagram

Instagram also lets you hide an individual comment: tap and hold the comment (Android) or swipe left (iPhone), then choose Hide comment. While that works for the occasional post, it quickly becomes unmanageable when you’re moderating hundreds of ads, which is where a platform like BrandBastion gives you one-click control across every post.

Moderating Instagram Ad comments at scale presents significant operational challenges, particularly when campaigns generate hundreds or thousands of comments across multiple posts.

If you're receiving hundreds of comments on your ads every month, a platform that aggregates all comments in one dashboard lets you review and hide comments in real-time using workflows instead of navigating to each post individually.

BrandBastion platform: Hide workflows

Our platform will aggregate all your comments in one place,  including Instagram ad comments. Our AI analyzes both the comment and the original post context to accurately identify harmful, spam, and off-brand comments, enabling you to moderate at scale with one-click actions while maintaining high accuracy and reducing false positives. And if you want to, you can easily unhide them too.

• Will the person be notified that their comment was hidden? No. Instagram will not send a notification to that person when you hide their comment.
• Will the person be able to see their comment was hidden? No. Even if they revisit the post, their comment will still be visible, but only to them. The comment will be hidden from everyone except the person who wrote it.
• Can you respond to a hidden comment on Instagram? No. But you can easily unhide the comment, reply to it and hide it again.
• Can you unhide an Instagram comment? Yes. With our platform, you can easily unhide an Instagram comment at any moment with one click.
  
  

BrandBastion platform: unified social inbox