How to Turn Off Comments on Facebook Ad

Worrying about spam, trolls, or negative comments on your latest Facebook ad campaign? You’re not alone. Figuring out how to turn off comments is a common challenge for advertisers who want a cleaner, more controlled environment for their ads. This guide will walk you through exactly how and when to disable comments on your ads, plus alternatives you might want to consider.

Reasons to Turn Off Comments on Your Facebook Ad

While comments can provide valuable social proof, there are many legitimate reasons an advertiser might choose to disable them. This isn’t about hiding from criticism - it's about strategic campaign management.

• Reducing Spam and Trolls: Some ads, by their nature, attract unsolicited links, hateful speech, or off-topic rants. Actively disabling comments means you don’t have to spend your day deleting spam from unrelated services.
• Managing Negative Feedback: If your ad is for a sensitive topic or an industry prone to debate, comments can quickly devolve into a negative storm that detracts from your message. Turning them off protects your brand image.
• Conserving Resources: Not every team has someone available 24/7 to moderate comments. If you're a small business or a solopreneur, turning off comments saves precious time and energy that can be better spent on other business activities.
• Focusing on the Call-to-Action (CTA): Sometimes, you don't want a conversation. You want a click, a lead, or a sale. Disabling comments can prevent potential customers from getting distracted and helps funnel their attention directly to your ad's CTA button.
• Preventing Competitor Hijacking: It’s not uncommon for less-than-ethical competitors to drop links to their own products in the comments of a successful ad. Disabling comments stops this practice cold.

Step-by-Step: How to Turn Off Comments on a Running Facebook Ad

Facebook doesn't have a simple "disable comments" checkbox inside the Ads Manager setup. The setting is located on the ad post itself. Since most ads are created as "unpublished posts" (also known as dark posts), you can't just find them on your page's timeline. Here’s the most reliable way to find your ad and turn the comments off.

The Easiest Method: Using the Ad Permalink

This is the most straightforward way to get directly to your live ad post and access its settings.

1. Navigate to Facebook Ads Manager. Go to the Ads Manager and find the campaign, ad set, and specific ad that you want to manage.
2. Open the Ad Preview. Select the ad by checking the box next to it and click the "Edit" button. This will open the ad editing panel. On the right side, you'll see a preview of your ad.
3. Find the "Share" Icon. Above the ad preview, look for a square icon with an arrow pointing out of it (the "Share" icon). Click on it.
4. Select "Facebook Post with Comments." A dropdown menu will appear. Select "Facebook Post with Comments." This will open the unique ad post in a new browser tab, displaying it exactly as users see it in their feeds.
5. Open the Post Options menu. On this new page, find your ad. Click the three dots icon ((...)) in the top-right corner of the post itself (not the dots in the top corner of the whole page).
6. Select "Turn off comments." A dropdown menu will appear with several options. Click on "Turn off comments." And that's it! Users will no longer be able to leave new comments on that specific ad. Existing comments will still be visible unless you hide or delete them.

You’ll need to repeat this process for every ad in your campaign where you want to disable comments, as each ad creative exists as a unique post.

Great Alternatives to Turning Off Comments Completely

Disabling comments is effective but it's also a blunt instrument. You might miss out on positive social proof ("I love this product!" or friends tagging friends) and valuable customer questions. Before you turn everything off, consider these powerful alternatives.

1. Set Up Automated Moderation with Moderation Assist

Meta’s built-in moderation tool is incredibly useful for automatically keeping your comments section clean. It acts like a 24/7 moderator that automatically hides unwanted comments based on criteria you set.

How to Set It Up:

1. Go to your Meta Business Suite and select "Inbox."
2. In the top right corner, click the "Automations" icon.
3. From the automation options, find and select Moderation Assist.
4. From here, you can add criteria for comments you want hidden automatically. Popular criteria include:

With Moderation Assist running, many of your spam problems may disappear without you needing to disable comments entirely.

2. Hiding Individual Comments

Hiding a comment is often a better option than deleting it. Here's why: When you delete a comment, the poster knows it's gone and might get angry, leading them to post again. But when you hide a comment:

• The original poster and their friends can still see the comment. To them, it looks like it's still public.
• For everyone else—including all your other potential customers—the comment is invisible.

This approach effectively neutralizes a negative or spammy comment without provoking the person who posted it. To hide an individual comment, simply hover over it, click the three dots ((...)) that appear, and select "Hide comment."

Weighing the Pros and Cons

Deciding whether to disable comments on your ads is a strategic choice. There’s no single right answer, so it's essential to consider the trade-offs.

Pros of an "Off" Switch:

• Total Message Control: You completely eliminate the risk of brand damage from inappropriate, hateful, or inaccurate comments. Your ad's message stands on its own.
• Reduced Ad-Spend Waste: By preventing potential customers from getting sidetracked by comment-section drama, you keep their focus on your intended action, potentially improving your ad’s ROI.
• Time and Cost Savings: You free your team from the manual, and often draining, task of comment moderation. This is a big win for small teams and solo entrepreneurs.

Cons of the "Off" Switch:

• Loss of Social Proof: Positive comments are a powerful form of social proof. Potential customers are heavily influenced when they see others express excitement, tag their friends, or share positive experiences.
• Appearance of Lacking Transparency: Some users perceive disabled comments as a sign that a business is hiding something or is unwilling to engage with customer feedback. This can foster distrust.
• Missed Opportunities for Insight: Comment sections can contain legitimate questions and feedback about your product, pricing, or the ad itself. This is valuable market research you are giving up.
• Suppressed Engagement Signals: While not the most important factor, high engagement (likes, comments, shares) is one of many signals Facebook's algorithm considers. Turning comments off removes one of those signals.

Final Thoughts

Ultimately, managing your Facebook Ads comments is about protecting your brand while achieving your campaign goals. Disabling them is a perfectly valid strategy when you need to prevent spam or maintain a positive environment, but it's best used selectively. For many advertisers, implementing alternatives like keyword filters in Moderation Assist or simply hiding the occasional negative comment offers a more balanced approach.

Beyond moderating ads, we know that understanding what's actually working across all your marketing channels is the much larger challenge. Instead of wasting hours manually pulling data from Facebook Ads, Google Analytics, and your Shopify store to build reports, you can get instant clarity. We built Graphed to connect all your data sources in one place so you can build dashboards and get insights simply by asking questions in plain English - no more endless spreadsheets or trying to make sense of a dozen different reports.