How to hide negative comments on Instagram ads (and when not to)

Instagram ad comments get rough. The audience is bigger and colder than your followers, and some of them came to argue. But “negative” covers a lot of ground, from a crypto-scam bot to a customer asking if the product really works. Only one of those should be hidden.

#Hide, delete, restrict or answer?

#Step 1: Find the comments on your Instagram ad

Instagram ads created in Ads Manager usually aren’t on your profile grid, so you can’t open them from your profile. Use one of these instead:

• Ads Manager: select the ad, open the preview menu and choose Instagram post with comments.
• Meta Business Suite: Inbox → Instagram comments lists comments on your ads alongside your organic posts.
• Notifications: tapping a comment notification in the Instagram app opens the ad post, which works for one-offs.

#Step 2: Hide the comment

1. 1
   Open the comment in Business Suite

   In Inbox → Instagram comments, click the comment to open it with the ad it’s on.

2. 2
   Open the comment’s menu

   Click the three-dot menu on the comment.

3. 3
   Choose Hide

   Select Hide comment. It’s now invisible to everyone except the person who wrote it. To reverse it, open the same menu and choose Unhide.

#Step 3: Filter comments automatically with Hidden Words

Hidden Words hides comments that contain offensive terms or the words and phrases you choose, before most people ever see them.

1. 1
   Open Hidden Words

   In the Instagram app, go to your profile → menu → Settings and activity → Hidden Words.

2. 2
   Turn on the built-in filter

   Turn on Hide comments to filter comments Instagram considers offensive.

3. 3
   Add your own words

   Under custom words and phrases, add the spam and scam phrases you keep seeing, then turn on hiding comments that contain them.

4. 4
   Check what got hidden

   Review hidden comments now and then. Filters catch real customers too.

On the Facebook side of the same ad, set up similar filters from your Page’s moderation settings in Meta Business Suite (look for Moderation Assist or your Page’s comment filtering settings), which can hide comments with certain keywords or links automatically.

#What to hide and what to answer

Hiding real complaints tends to backfire. The commenter can still see their comment, so they don’t know it’s hidden, but their friends can, and screenshots travel. Worse, hiding every doubt leaves your section looking too perfect, which reads as fake.

#How to answer a negative comment

Use three beats: acknowledge, give the fact, offer the next step. Keep it short and never sarcastic.

Even better: ask a real customer to answer. A reply from someone who owns the product (“I’ve had mine for a year, still use it daily”) handles a skeptic better than anything the brand can say. MyWord’s Ask a friend sends them the comment and a suggested reply they can edit and post from their own account.