What happens when you hide a comment on Facebook
The comment stays visible to the person who wrote it and to their friends. Everyone else stops seeing it, along with any replies underneath. The person is not told, and you can unhide it at any time. Deleting is the other option: it removes the comment from the post.
Checked against Meta’s Help Center on 15 September 2026.
Side by side
Hidden, deleted, or blocked
Every row below is what Meta’s own help pages say. Where they say nothing, this table says “not documented” rather than guessing — plenty of articles will tell you confidently that a deleted comment is gone forever, and Meta does not put that in writing.
| Who or what | You hide it | You delete it | You block the person |
|---|---|---|---|
| The person who wrote it | Still sees it | Gone from the post | Not documented |
| Their friends | Still see it | Gone from the post | Not documented |
| Everyone else | Cannot see it | Gone from the post | Not documented |
| You and your admins | Under “Hidden by this Page” | Not documented | Not documented |
| Replies underneath it | Hidden with it | Not documented | Not documented |
| Is the person told? | No | Not documented | Not documented |
| Can you undo it? | Yes, unhide | Not documented | Yes, unblock |
Sources: hiding a comment · deleting one · Business Suite on hidden comments · blocking · banning someone from a Page
Which one to reach for
Hide by default, delete on purpose
Hide spam, scam links and abuse. It is quiet and reversible: the person carries on believing their comment is up, so there is nothing to argue with, and you can put it back if you got it wrong.
Delete when the comment must not exist — a customer’s phone number posted in public, a leaked order detail, content you are legally required to remove. Meta does not document a way back, so treat it as final.
Block the account, not the comment, when the same person keeps coming back. Meta also offers to ban “new profiles they may create”. What happens to the comments they already left is not documented, so check the post afterwards.
Doing it by hand
Where the controls are
Instagram is not the same
And Meta’s pages disagree about it
On Instagram, one Meta page says a hidden comment is “only visible to you and the person who made the comment”; the same page also describes others tapping View hidden comments; the Business Suite page says the commenter’s friends see it too. We cannot tell you which is current, and neither can they — assume a hidden Instagram comment is more visible than a hidden Facebook one, not less (Meta).
One genuine difference: Instagram’s Hidden Words list applies to comments already on your posts and puts them back if you switch it off. Facebook’s blocked words only affect what arrives next.
At any volume
Nobody hides comments one by one for long
Decide once
Links, emails and phone numbers, your own keyword lists, and a whitelist that overrules them — set per Page. Try them on a comment.
Hide, or delete
Every filter hides by default, because hiding is the reversible one. Switch a rule to delete when you are certain.
Know what happened
Facebook shows you what is hidden. It does not tell you when, or why. Every action here is logged with the rule that caused it.
Stop hiding them by hand
14 days, no card. Connect one Page and watch the next spam comment go before you see it.
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