Comments from users on business pages on social media are critical and say a lot about brand perception. Unfortunately (or fortunately), no one is immune to negative comments and feedback on your posts. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what to do about negative comments on Facebook and what happens if you decide to hide them. 

Best practices on hiding comments on Facebook

There is no correct recipe on whether you should hide or keep negative comments. Although, some teams create corporate guidelines on how to handle specific cases that require a thoughtful and considerate response. In general, the final decision will vary from case to case. 

Some social media marketers believe that hiding negative comments create an illusion of a perfect brand reputation without a single complaint or spam. Others believe that negative comments are inevitable and don’t hurt the company’s bottom line. So, regardless of the number of complaints, they continue to operate as usual without even addressing the issues. The final decision depends on the overall company branding and its identity. 

However, removing comments that cause ethnic disputes, offend others, create conflicts, etc — is a good practice. Although on social media it is common for people to start arguing with each other, it is important to navigate those conversations to avoid being associated with either part of the conflict unrelated to your business. 

Here is a shortlist of negative comments that should be hidden:

• Spam links 
• Insults and inappropriate comments 
• Comments that have been complained about by other users 
• Trolls and competitors who make promos for their products on your page

Related article: How to unhide a post on Facebook? Here are all the answers

How to handle negative comments without hiding them? 

Communication is key. Angry and disappointed customers expect sympathy and understanding, even if you can’t solve the problem immediately. You can use an Imago Technique to deal with negative comments like a pro: 

• Mirroring: repeat everything the clients have said to you. Mirroring helps you to convey that you understand their problems.  
• Validation: be on the customers’ side, and validate their concerns. Respond with confirming language about the problem. For example: “Yes, anyone would feel this way…”, “It makes sense to me…” etc. 
• Empathy:  show empathy and try to describe your clients’ feelings about what happened. For example, you might use expressions such as: “Yes, I imagine you feel disappointed…” etc. This way you present yourself as a human being who is trying to understand other people’s problems.  

One more tip: Don’t leave the negative reviews unanswered for too long. Catch the negative comment as soon as you can before it attracts attention. 

How to hide comments on Facebook? 

You can hide negative comments in three steps: 

1. Find the comment that you need to hide; 

2. Click on three dots next to the comment to see options; 

3. Click on “Hide comment”.  

The above-described method works for small social media teams. However, if you are looking for a solution to streamline the process across all colleagues and establish collaborative workflows, the Sociality.io Engage module allows users to hide comments on Facebook inside one central hub.  

Sociality.io Engage module is a unified inbox that allows social media marketing teams to build effective and scalable workflows to engage with social audiences. Oversee all conversation logs, assignment times, first reply times, and closing times, on top of the entire history of all actions your team has taken to help social media audiences.

On top of that, you can set up alerts. If you need to stay alert about specific keywords, Sociality.io will send you emails to let you know. 

What happens when you hide comments on your posts/page? 

When you hide a comment, it remains visible to the commenter and their friends. For any other person, the comment will be no longer visible. You can view hidden comments as blurred ones, with three options banning users, unhiding comments, and sending messages. 

Does hiding comments notify the commenter? 

No, Facebook does not notify the commenter whose comment you hid away. 

However, the user can check it from another account and discover that their comment has been hidden.

Hiding comments is the best solution only to hateful speech, spam, and trolls. In other cases, it’s better to address negative comments to eliminate blind spots in your business and gain your customers’ trust. In both ways, you can count on Sociality.io – our platform will facilitate your efforts to win over social media platforms.