How to turn off comments on a LinkedIn post (and when not to)

Table of contents

• Decide whether turning off comments is worth what it costs
• Before you start: check who can change the setting
• Turn off comments before you publish a post
• Turn off comments on a post you already published
• Limit comments to your connections instead of switching them off
• Know what happens to your existing comments
• Manage comments on a sponsored or ad post
• When switching comments off stops being the right tool
• The one check to run before your next high-risk post

Decide whether turning off comments is worth what it costs

To turn off comments on a LinkedIn post, open the post's "Who can comment on this post" control and switch it from Anyone to No one, either while you compose the post or from the three-dot menu after it is live. That is the whole mechanic, and it works the same on desktop and mobile. The harder question is whether you should, because that setting does more than block bad actors.

When you switch comments off, you remove a public engagement signal, the social proof of an active thread, and a slice of reach, all at once. You lose the good comments to stop the bad ones. On LinkedIn that trade is higher-stakes than on most networks, because this is where a specific set of B2B risks concentrate. Recruiter spam and fake-job pitches cluster under company announcements. Competitors lurk in hiring and product-post comments, poaching attention and talent in plain sight. And executive or employee posts carry brand risk that is publicly attributed to a named person, so a single bad thread reads as the company's position, not a stranger's.

Those risks are real, but they rarely justify silencing everyone. The scam pressure alone is measurable: according to FTC data on job scam losses, between 2020 and 2024 reports of job and fake-employment-agency scams nearly tripled, and consumer losses grew from $90 million to $501 million. That is the exact activity showing up under hiring posts, and it is a moderation problem, not a reason to close the comment section on every announcement you publish. If you have worked through the same trade-off on other networks, the logic behind turning off comments on Facebook is the parallel case, and the mechanics of scam and spam bots on social media explain why the spam volume rarely stops on its own.

The fast answer to "should I?": only for the specific post where an open thread carries more risk than value, and even then, usually there is a better option than a full shutoff. The steps below cover both the shutoff and the middle ground.

Before you start: check who can change the setting

Three things decide where the control lives and whether you can touch it.

• Identify the post type. A personal profile post, a company Page post, and a sponsored or ad post each keep the comment control in a different place, so confirm which one you are dealing with before you go looking for the setting.
• Confirm your Page access. On a company Page, changing comment settings is gated by role: only a Page admin comment permissions holder, specifically a super admin or content admin, can turn off comments before publishing as the Page. If you post as the Page but hold a lesser role, you will not see the option.
• Note the desktop versus mobile split. Most of this works identically across surfaces, but the iOS behavior for sponsored posts is a genuine exception that matters later. Keep it in mind now so it does not surprise you.

Turn off comments before you publish a post

For a new personal post, set the control while you compose. As you draft the post, open the comment-control menu (labeled around "Who can comment on this post") and choose the setting you want before you hit publish. On mobile the menu sits in the same composer, just tucked behind the same comment-control icon. This one is quick.

You get three options:

• Anyone: the default. Everyone on and off LinkedIn who can see the post can comment.
• Connections only: restricts commenting to your first-degree connections, so strangers cannot drop in.
• No one: turns commenting off entirely for that post.

Do the same on a company Page post

Posting as the Page follows the same flow with one difference: the admin gating from the checklist above applies, so you need super admin or content admin access to set the control while composing. LinkedIn documents the Page-post path for both desktop and iOS, and the sequence mirrors the personal one, open the comment control in the composer, pick your setting, publish. If you do not see the option, it is almost always a role problem, not a missing feature.

Turn off comments on a post you already published

Yes, you can change this after a post is live, so a thread going sideways is fixable in seconds. Open the published post, click the three-dot menu in the top corner of the post, and select the option to edit who can comment. Choose No one to close the thread, or Connections only to narrow it. On mobile the same three-dot menu carries the same control. The change takes effect immediately for new activity.

Limit comments to your connections instead of switching them off

Most guides jump straight from "open to everyone" to "off for everyone" and skip the option that solves more cases than either. Connections only keeps the thread live for people you are actually connected to while shutting out drive-by comments from strangers, which is where most recruiter spam, competitor sniping, and cold-pitch noise comes from. Prefer it over No one whenever you still want genuine engagement and social proof but want to cut the anonymous-stranger risk. Reserve the full No one setting for the narrow case where any public thread on that specific post is a liability.

Know what happens to your existing comments

This is the step people get wrong, because the web contradicts itself on it. The authoritative answer, straight from LinkedIn's official comment-settings help page: "When you turn off comments, existing comments aren't deleted." On desktop and the LinkedIn mobile app, switching a live post to No one after it is shared hides the ability to add new comments but leaves the existing thread in place. Turn comments back on and the earlier comments are still there.

There is one real exception, and it is worth stating precisely. For sponsored posts on iOS, the behavior differs: per LinkedIn's guidance on managing comments on sponsored posts, on iOS, turning off comments after a sponsored post is shared removes existing comments, which cannot be restored on re-enable. So if you are managing an ad from an iPhone or iPad and you disable comments post-launch, treat those comments as gone for good.

One distinction to keep clean: "turning off comments" is a per-post setting that governs who can comment, while "deleting a comment" is a separate action that removes one specific comment from the thread. They are not the same task, and removing individual harmful comments one by one is its own workflow worth its own guide. This piece is about the setting, not the cleanup.

Manage comments on a sponsored or ad post

Sponsored and ad posts do not use the same organic toggle. They carry a separate comment-management control, and selecting No one there turns comments off for both the sponsored placement and its organic version, so you are not managing two settings in two places. The iOS delete-on-disable behavior covered above applies here specifically, so if you run ads from an iOS device, set the comment control before the post goes live rather than after, and you avoid losing the existing thread entirely. Keep this in your pre-launch checklist for paid, not your post-launch scramble.

When switching comments off stops being the right tool

The manual, per-post off switch works fine for the occasional problem post. It stops working when the problem is continuous. It does not scale across the volume a busy Page generates, the after-hours windows when no one is watching, the languages your commenters actually use, or a portfolio of executive and employee accounts each posting on their own schedule. And every time you use it, you trade away all the engagement on a post to remove a few bad comments. That math gets worse the more often you reach for it.

The alternative is targeted, always-on moderation: removing or actioning the harmful comments while the genuine engagement stays live. This is where AI-powered comment moderation software does the volume work that a per-post toggle cannot. BrandBastion's Reputation+ brand protection platform monitors the conversation layer around your paid and organic LinkedIn posts around the clock and moderates and deletes harmful comments, so the recruiter spam, competitor sniping, and scam pitches come out while the real conversation stays in. On LinkedIn specifically, the mechanism is moderation and deletion of harmful comments plus monitoring across comments, messages, and mentions, not a hide function, so scope your expectations to what the platform actually allows.

Precision is the point. Because moderation runs on granular comment moderation categories rather than a blunt on-or-off switch, you can action competitor mentions, harassment, or industry-specific risk flags without touching legitimate engagement. And because the AI is paired with human oversight and governance rather than left to run unsupervised, the actions stay defensible in a post-incident review, which matters most for the exec and employee posts that carry the most public risk. If comment-level risk is part of a wider mandate for you, it fits inside broader social media brand protection strategies rather than living as a one-off setting you toggle under pressure.

The one check to run before your next high-risk post

Before your next announcement, hiring post, or executive post goes live, decide the comment setting deliberately instead of reacting after the thread turns. Look at the post in front of you and ask whether an open comment section on this specific post carries more risk than value. If it does, use Connections only before you use No one, and reserve the full shutoff for the rare post where any public thread is a liability.

Then do the second check, the one that actually scales: identify which handful of your accounts and campaigns, the exec profiles, the hiring Pages, the paid placements pulling the most spam, carry enough continuous risk to warrant always-on moderation instead of a blunt shutoff you have to remember to flip every time. That short list, not the toggle, is where the real decision lives.