Did you know Facebook has a tool to help stop spam and trolling comments from ever hitting your Facebook page at all? If not, you’re not alone — many organizations have no idea how to use Facebook’s moderation settings to keep inappropriate comments at bay.
One reason you may never have heard of this tool is that until recently it was confusingly known as the “profanity filter.” Its new name hasn’t changed its basic functionality, however: It gives you the power to block certain words or phrases from appearing on your page.
Are you imagining never having to remove another invitation to download and watch all the latest Hollywood blockbusters? How about skeevy invitations to “friend” a lonely teenager, or get rich quick working from home? You can do that, along with blocking four-letter words, by following these steps:
- Make sure you’re logged into a Facebook profile that is an administrator on your organization’s Facebook page
- Go to the page
- Go to Settings
- In “General,” scroll about halfway down to “Page Moderation”
- Click “edit” and type in words or phrases that you want to block, using a comma to separate. Include both singular and plural forms of words.
- Click “Save Changes” and you’re set!
You can add to this list any time you want as new spam patterns emerge.
To give the filter a little help, you can also set the strength of the default profanity filter right below the page moderation settings. The stronger the filter, the more rigorously Facebook will block words it deems “profane” — although you may not really want to block a slight misspelling of “Shih Tzu,” so the toughest setting isn’t necessarily the best choice.
That’s it! The best part? You can use the time you save no longer moderating spam comments to save more animals!