How To Delete a Comment on Instagram and Handle Negativity

Deleting negative comments on Instagram can be tempting — but sometimes, this is not the right approach. Deleting genuine constructive critiques or negative opinions from your Instagram comments can appear 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 you should delete from your Instagram?

In this blog, we cover: 

• What is an Instagram comment? 
• 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.

An Instagram comment is a message a user leaves under a post or Reel on Instagram. To leave an Instagram comment, users can simply tap the ‘Add a comment…’ text below a post to leave their thoughts, questions or other messages in a comment.

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, especially if this number is high compared to their legitimate followers. 
• Their bio contains grammatical errors or seems poorly written.

Spam comments happen for several reasons. If you’re a high-profile brand with many followers, this might seem like an ‘easy opportunity’ for spam accounts. Even if you delete their comments, 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 trending Instagram hashtags are one aspect of a robust strategy, brands should be mindful to limit their use and only use ultra-relevant tags 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.

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, so try to limit your use of popular hashtags — think hashtags with 1M posts or more. Brands should 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 can filter comments that might contain offensive words and even customize which words or phrases you want to avoid in your comment section. You can filter comments 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 filter from comments automatically. 

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 hide is an excellent way to prevent spam bots, they can still seep through — unfortunately, as of writing, Instagram has no way to block spam accounts proactively. 

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. 

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 An Instagram Comment From Android

For Android users, the steps to delete a comment are a little different. 

• Go to the comment section and select the comment you wish to delete. 
• Long-hold the comment.
• A blue bar will appear on top of the page.
• Click the trashcan icon to delete your selected comment.

How To Delete Your Own Comment on Instagram

Deleting your own comment on Instagram is simple. To delete a comment you wrote on Instagram: 

• Swipe the comment to the left. 
• This will delete the comment. 
• Alternatively, swipe to the left and click the trashcan icon that appears in red to delete the comment.

A brand — or individual — might want to turn off Instagram comments for many reasons. Although sometimes this can appear disingenuous, it might be appropriate if your account is targeted with spam, especially if it contains dangerous links or harmful comments to your audience. Conversely, if you want to delete all comments or auto-delete all comments, turning off your comments is the best way to do this. 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.

How To Delete Instagram Comments From a Particular Account

If you don’t want to block a user but feel like eliminating comments from a particular user is necessary — they might be spamming your account with too much noise, are unpredictable or a number of other reasons — you can restrict their access to your profile. This doesn’t eliminate their ability to view your account, but it eliminates their comments and sends their chats to your ‘Message requests’ folder.

To delete or hide all comments from a particular user: 

• Go to the user’s profile from which you wish to restrict or hide comments. 
• Click the three dots located in the top right corner. 
• Click ‘Restrict’ and then ‘Dismiss’ to exit the pop-up that explains the user’s access.

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.

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.’ 
• Enter any words, phrases or emojis you’d like to hide from your comment section in the text box. 

Another step brands should take is to turn on Advanced comment filtering. This automatically filters out comments that might contain offensive phrases, which might be different than the terms you’ve specified 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.

How To Hide Offensive Comments on Instagram

Hiding all offensive comments and message requests on Instagram means that the platform automatically hides comments they perceive as offensive. To hide all offensive comments on Instagram: 

• First, navigate to ‘Settings’. 
• Go to ‘How others can interact with you’.
• Scroll down to the ‘Hidden Words’ section, and toggle ‘Offensive words and phrases’ to on.
• All offensive comments will now be filtered out by Instagram

Is there a comment you want to highlight above all on your Instagram profile? Pinning a post will make this comment appear at the top of your Instagram comment section. You can’t pin your own comments on other profiles, but you can pin them to your own content. To pin an Instagram comment:

• Find the comment on a Post or Reel you wish to pin. 
• Tap and hold the comment. 
• Select ‘Pin Comment’.
• Your comment is now pinned to the top of your post.

If you’re searching for a comment you left, there are easier ways to find it than sifting through your feed. To find a comment you left on Instagram:

Revisit Your Activity

• Go to Instagram, and select the menu indicated with three lines in the top right corner.
• Click ‘Your activity’.
• Select ‘Interactions’ and toggle to ‘Comments’.
• From there, you’ll be able to see your comment history.  

Download Instagram Data

• Navigate to your Instagram profile. 
• Select the menu in the top right corner. 
• Under ‘Your activity’, select ‘Download your information.’ 
• From there, you’ll receive a prompt to enter your password. 
• This provides you with a detailed list of your Instagram activity. It may take up to 14 days for the data to be delivered to your profile.

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 is not notified if you delete their comment. However, if they navigate to your profile, they can manually discover whether their comment has been deleted or not. It’s worth noting that this action doesn’t appear in the ‘Activity’ tab, either. 

Can you block someone on Instagram?

Yes, and learning how to block someone on Instagram is easy. To block an account from viewing your profile, follow these steps: 

• Navigate to their profile.
• Click the three dots in the top right corner. 
• Select ‘Block’, the second from the top. 
• Done — this user is now blocked from seeing your profile and content.

If you’re curious about deleting all comments from a particular user, blocking them with these steps is the most effective way to do this.  

Can you edit a comment on Instagram?

Unfortunately, you cannot edit a comment on Instagram. You can delete a comment and rewrite it if you’ve made a type. Alternatively, if you wish to add context to a previous comment you’ve made, you can hit ‘reply’ on your original comment and add your desired text. 

How to respond to Instagram comments? 

To respond to Instagram comments, users can click ‘Reply’ under the comment you wish to respond to. From there, type your comment and hit enter.