Hiding abusive comments automatically

Moderation checks every comment that arrives against a list of words. Anything that matches is hidden straight away, before any of your automations look at it. It covers comments on every post and reel you have, old and new, and comments during a live broadcast.

It is available on the Starter plan.

What hiding actually does

This is the part worth reading twice, because Instagram's word for it is weaker than the effect.

• The comment becomes invisible to everyone else. Nobody scrolling your post will see it.
• The person who wrote it still sees it, exactly as they wrote it, and is never told it was hidden.
• They can carry on commenting. Hiding is not blocking.
• Nothing is deleted. You can put any comment back from the inbox.

That last point is why hiding is the default rather than deleting: it takes the comment away from your audience without starting an argument with the person who left it.

It runs before your automations

A hidden comment gets no automatic reply. Without this, an automation matching on a keyword could cheerfully thank somebody for abusing you, in public, under your own post. The rest of the thread is untouched, and ordinary comments are answered exactly as before.

Seeing what was hidden

The moderation page lists everything it has hidden, with the comment text and the word that matched, so you can check it is behaving. Each one also appears in your inbox, marked as hidden, where you can put it back if it should not have been caught.

If something was hidden by mistake

Open the thread in your inbox and choose Unhide. The comment becomes visible again immediately. Then remove the word that caught it from your word list, so it does not happen again.

Turning it off

Switch it off on the moderation page. Nothing that was already hidden is unhidden, and your word list is kept, so turning it back on picks up where you left off.

What it does not do

• It does not delete anything.
• It does not block anyone or report them to Instagram.
• It does not touch direct messages, only comments.
• It does not act on comments that arrived before you switched it on.