Should You Delete Comments on Instagram? How To Deal With Spam or Negative Interactions

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July 11, 2023

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Last Updated On

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It can be tempting to delete negative comments on Instagram — but sometimes, this is not the right approach. Deleting Instagram comments that are genuinely constructive critiques or negative opinions can come across as distrustful, disingenuous and unflattering. Conversely, some negative comments are spam or harmful and should certainly be removed from your comment section.

So how do you know which negative comments should be deleted from your Instagram?

In this blog, we cover:

What is spam on Instagram?
Why do I get spam comments on Instagram?
Should brands avoid negative Instagram comments?
How to prevent spam comments on Instagram.
How to hide, delete and turn off Instagram comments.

What Is Spam on Instagram?

Spam on Instagram is different from critical or unwanted comments. While the former often comes from bots, sellers or other means, the latter are comments critical of your brand, products or even approach to posting.

Spam often comes from a website attempting to sell something — here are a few ways to identify spam in your comment section:

Repeated links to external, unfamiliar sites.
The account posting the spam is low-quality — they might be private, have 0 posts, followers that also seem like spam accounts, or have low-quality or suspicious profile photos (think obvious free stock images, photos of models or other figures who likely have their own, verifiable social profiles).
Following a high number of accounts, particularly if this number is high compared to their legitimate followers.
Their bio contains grammatical errors or seems sloppily written.

Why Do I Get Spam Comments on Instagram?

Spam comments happen for a number of reasons. If you’re a high-profile brand with many followers, this might seem like an ‘easy opportunity’ for spam accounts. Even if their comments are deleted, a significant following means they might receive engagement from their comments before a brand has the opportunity to delete them.

This isn’t the only reason Instagram posts receive spam — another lesser-known reason brands receive spam is from using popular hashtags. Sometimes, spam accounts use bots to monitor popular hashtags and comment on these posts to increase their followers. While using trending Instagram hashtags is one aspect of a robust strategy, brands should be mindful to limit their use and only use tags that are ultra-relevant to their brand to avoid attracting spam.

Should Brands Ignore Spam Comments on Instagram?

Simply put, no — brands should not ignore spam comments on Instagram. Brands should report any offensive or inappropriate comments and delete spam from their profiles.

While we mention the negative impact deleting critical comments can have, the opposite is true of spam — brands should absolutely remove these from their comments as they don’t build trust or inspire confidence in your brand.

The benefit of deleting spam? It makes your profile and posts seem more relevant for your audience, less crowded with noise and more professional overall.

How To Prevent Spam Comments on Instagram

While a certain amount of spam is inevitable, especially if you’re a high-profile account with many followers, there are some steps brands can take to reduce the amount of spam they receive and mitigate factors that contribute to it.

Here are some steps brands can take to prevent spam in their Instagram comments:

Limit Broad, General Hashtag Use

Bots can target popular hashtags, try to limit your use of popular hashtags — think hashtags with 1M posts or more. Brands should take care to look for trending hashtags, ideally with 500K posts or less.

Since these are sometimes relevant to your content, brands should conduct A/B testing with hashtags to determine if they receive more spam when they use them, but also if they receive good engagement levels — this indicates that there’s a time and place to use popular hashtags in your content.

Hide Unwanted Phrases From Comments

To keep your comment section free from controversial or inappropriate phrases, Instagram Settings offer the ability to filter comments that might contain offensive words and even customize which words or phrases you want to avoid in your comment section. This can be done by turning on the ‘Advanced Comment Filtering’ option which automatically removes potentially inappropriate words and phrases, or by adding your own custom phrases for Instagram to automatically filter from comments.

Block Known Spam Bots From Profile

While blocking users who are critical but not necessarily harmful can hurt your brand reputation, blocking spam bots is a proactive step to eliminate spam from your profile.

While filtering comments and adding custom phrases to be hidden is an excellent way to prevent spam bots, they can still seep through — unfortunately, as of writing, Instagram has no way to proactively block spam accounts.

You might also want to report the account for Spam — before blocking the user, do this:

Go to the user’s profile.
Click the three dots in the top right corner.
Select ‘Report’.
Select your reason for reporting — in this case, it will be ‘Spam’ or ‘Scams or fraud’ depending on the user.

However, to block a spam bot from your Instagram profile:

Go to the user’s profile.
Click the three dots in the top right corner.
Select ‘Block’.
This user is now blocked from viewing and commenting on your profile.

How To Delete a Comment on Instagram

While you can restrict a specific user’s access to your comment section — the perfect step if you wish to hide this user’s comments from view — you might wonder how to delete comments on Instagram in general.

To delete an Instagram comment from your post:

Go to the comment you wish to delete.
Swipe towards the left — the comment will delete this way, or you will see a trashcan icon. Click this to delete the comment.

How To Delete Your Own Comment on Instagram

Deleting your own comment on Instagram is simple — swipe to the left. If you continue to swipe left, the comment will delete, or you can click the trashcan icon to delete your comment.

How To Turn Off Instagram Comments

A brand — or individual — might want to turn off Instagram comments for a number of reasons. Although sometimes this can appear disingenuous, it might be appropriate if your account is being targeted with spam, especially if they contain dangerous links or harmful comments to your audience. Rarely, although it does happen, it can be appropriate to turn off comments during a particularly sensitive time.

To hide all comments from your posts:

Click the three lines or ‘More’ in the bottom left.
Select ‘How others can interact with you’ on the left-hand side.
Under ‘Hidden Words’, toggle the ‘Hide comments’ tab to on.

Hiding unwanted words and phrases from your content is a great step to prevent spam or inappropriate comments on your socials. While it’s also a beneficial preventative measure to prevent spam bots from commenting on your account, it helps proactively eliminate harmful language or derogatory comments from your comment section.

How To Hide Comments on Instagram

Here’s how to hide specific phrases from your comment section:

Click the three lines or ‘More’ in the bottom left.
Select ‘How others can interact with you’ on the left-hand side.
Click ‘Manage comment settings’.
Now, enter any words, phrases or emojis you’d like to hide from your comment section in the text box.

Another step brands might want to take is to turn on Advanced comment filtering. This automatically filters out comments that might contain offensive phrases, but these might be different than the terms you’ve specified using in the steps above. To turn on Advanced comment filtering:

Click the three lines or ‘More’ in the bottom left.
Select ‘How others can interact with you’ on the left-hand side.
Under ‘Hidden Words’, toggle the ‘Advanced comment filtering’ tab to on.

To prevent unwanted Instagram messages:

Click the three lines or ‘More’ in the bottom left.
Select ‘How others can interact with you’ on the left-hand side.
Under ‘Hidden Words’, toggle the ‘Hide messages requests’ tab to on.

Soar on Social With Dash Hudson

Dash Hudson’s Instagram Management Tools help brands streamline their social strategy on Instagram from posting to measurement and reporting. The Scheduler lets you plan, schedule and auto-publish Stories and posts, while the UGC takes this a step further by pulling the best content shared from your community. Are Instagram comments top of mind? The Community Manager tool lets you reply to messages, mentions and Instagram comments from one central location so you never miss an important opportunity to engage with your audience — Social Listening Trends and Topics is a great complement to your community management strategy, so you can easily monitor the sentiment of comments and mentions of your brand, and use these insights to refine your strategy. From there, you can measure your performance and create reports with Social Analytics, and unearth Competitive Insights to benchmark your performance against competitors.

FAQs

Can you delete comments from Instagram?

Yes, you can delete comments from Instagram. To delete a comment, simply swipe the comment to the left. Click the trash can icon that appears — the comment is now deleted.

Will someone know if you delete your comment on Instagram?

No, the user does not receive a notification if you delete their comment. However, if they navigate to your profile, they can manually discover if their comment has been deleted or not. It’s worth noting that this action doesn’t appear in the ‘Activity’ tab, either.