Facebook remains a very popular social media platform and is used by a variety of people both for personal and professional purposes. Facebook has allowed thousands of people to stay in touch with friends and loved ones through good times and bad and it is a free platform for advertising a business and legitimizing it by creating an official page.
There is however a dark side to Facebook as well, with trolling and rampant cyberbullying, which has caused some people severe emotional distress. The social media giant has typically limited the ability of their users to control their content and therefore it is especially important to know what is available to you in terms of controlling your privacy and what appears on your wall.
We do not mean to be misleading with our title, as only admins of groups and pages can disable comments on a post. You can disable comments on a post you have made in a group as well. However, it is not possible to disable comments on posts you make on your timeline which a number of Facebook users have found difficult.
There are however some options that can help you regain control of your Facebook wall and what is displayed on it. We will go through what you can do for your posts and personal profile first then discuss the case on posting in a group or being a group admin.
Table of Contents
Editing Access to your Private Posts
Although you cannot turn off comments on posts on your timeline you can at least significantly limit who sees them. There are a variety of options that should cover most situations.
This is a useful option as you can for example share things with a group of friends. You can also exclude someone you know might be problematic on a certain topic without having to block that person.
However, this also means you have to remember to set your preferences each time you post. We recognize this can be annoying though it may ultimately save you distress and keep your content somewhat more secure.
Hiding or Deleting Comments
Your next option apart from removing or hiding an entire post is to hide or delete comments on a post. Maybe you forgot to set your audience or it’s an older post and you recently noticed comments you don’t appreciate.
In this case you need to manually select the comments you’d like to hide or delete. Deleting removes them permanently for you and anyone else viewing your post.
See the picture below for how to do this in a browser.
This is similar on a mobile phone, however in IOS for example the … menu is replaced by “more” which is located under each comment.
Using Facebook’s Privacy Settings
Under privacy and settings which you can normally open by clicking the down arrow on the top banner furthest to the right, you can select a number of options. These change frequently but have always included some ability to limit who can see your private pictures and posts with the most private option being “only me” and the option “public” or “everyone” enables anyone to see your data.
If you keep your friend’s list relatively trim choosing the “friends” option for most of your privacy settings can be a good proxy for keeping your information safer.
Facebook frequently makes changes to their privacy settings and we recommend therefore to check the page frequently (a couple of times a year at least) to ensure no major changes have occurred that you need to make note of. We also strongly advise reading the fine print. For example, in the image below, we show an optional setting that hides certain words from your profile if you choose so, however, this does not prevent people from posting them or others from viewing them.
Disabling Comments in a Group Post
Finally, if you are an admin in a large group going through every single comment may be incredibly time-consuming. Luckily in this instance, you are able to turn off comments for posts that may be causing issues or that do not comply with the ethos of your group. There are other options you have as an admin. Below we demonstrate how to turn off comments.
Another interesting option is the ability to turn on approval for groups. This might be an ok option for groups with a high ratio of admins to users and where online arguments often break out.
Group members can turn off comments on their own posts as well. The process is similar to above.
Final Comments
We are becoming increasingly aware of difficulties with sharing content online. Although most people are well-meaning there can be some difficulties with certain topics and personalities and in worst-case scenarios, people may find themselves victims of cyberbullying. In addition to deleting comments and hiding them, you may need to limit who can see your posts and delete or block toxic people. Don’t be afraid to talk to someone or seek help if someone is bullying you online.
