While turning off comments might seem like the quickest solution, there's a better approach: strategic moderation. In this post, we'll show you how to disable comments on Facebook and explain why hiding harmful comments, rather than blocking all engagement, protects your brand while preserving the performance benefits of active comment sections.
How to disable: Use Meta Business Suite, click the three dots on a post, and set "Who can comment" to "Profiles and Pages you mention."
Engagement Risk: Turning off comments removes social proof and can alienate customers who want to interact with your brand.
Algorithm Impact: Lower engagement leads to lower relevance scores, which can significantly increase your Facebook advertising costs.
The Alternative: Active moderation (hiding spam while responding to queries) preserves reach while protecting brand reputation.
Open the post, click or tap the three dots, and look for "Who can comment on your post?".
Choose the most restrictive available audience, such as Profiles and Pages you mention. This does not always fully disable comments, but it can limit commenting to only people or Pages you tag. Available options may vary by account type and post visibility.
Meta announced in 2024 that it was testing a control allowing businesses to turn off comments on Facebook and Instagram ads. However, the feature does not appear to be available in every ad account, so some advertisers may still need to rely on moderation tools like profanity filtering, keyword hiding, and manual comment moderation.
Meta's profanity filter can automatically hide comments containing profanity, and this filter also extends to ads published by your Page. To enable it:
Open your Facebook Page settings.
Go to "Audience and visibility" controls, and click on "Followers and public content"
Find "Hide posts and comments with profanity" and enable it.
You can also enable "Hide comments containing certain words from your Page" and add words, phrases, or emojis you want filtered automatically. This filter also applies to ads.
Open the group post, select the three dots, and choose Turn off commenting. This closes the post to new comments.
Social media is built for conversation. If comments are completely turned off, brands miss opportunities to engage with customers, answer questions, gather feedback, and build trust in real time.
Also, higher engagement rates lead to improved algorithmic reach. Posts with higher engagement rates get prioritized by platform algorithms, reducing your cost per impression and increasing organic reach. For example, posts with active comment sections can reach 2-3x more users than posts with comments disabled, as the algorithm interprets engagement as a relevance signal.
Comments also provide valuable social proof, giving potential customers a chance to see real questions, opinions, and experiences from other people.
When comments are disabled, brands risk losing:
Rather than turning comments off completely, a better approach is to keep them on and moderate them effectively.
We recommend moderating comments instead of turning off comments. This way, you can reap the benefits of having comments turned on, while mitigating the risks that come with having active comment feeds 24/7.
Effective comment moderation requires three core actions:
BrandBastion helps brands keep harmful comments under control with always-on moderation, crisis monitoring, and alerts. By identifying risks early and helping teams respond faster, BrandBastion makes it easier to protect brand reputation and maintain a safer presence across social channels.