Moderation tools

Consider utilising each social media platforms moderation tools, including:

Profanity filters

• Profanity filters use algorithms to censor offensive words, swearing, and other forms of bad language.

Filtering out specific words (and emojis)

• Facebook has the option to cut out specific words not covered under its profanity filter.
• You can choose up to 1,000 keywords, phrases, or emojis to block from your page, which will automatically hide variations of the word too.

Limiting who can comment on your posts

• By adjusting the commenting audience, you can limit who can comment in the first place. This function works on organic but not paid posts.
• The drawback is that comments bring more attention to your post, as your post is then more likely to appear in the news feed of people who follow the commenter.

Turn off comments

• If you think a post is likely to invite harmful comments or contains particularly sensitive information or material, it might be worth disabling or limiting the comments on the post. Using this function frequently may limit your following and interactivity as it takes away the opportunity for engagement and dialogue. We recommend for you to only use this option when absolutely required.
• Turning off comments can result in low content rank meaning fewer people will see your post. Always aim to moderate comments rather than turn comments off.
• However, you might consider turning off comments particularly when moderators are not rostered.
• Note comments may be turned off on social media paid advertising.

Increasing moderation

• For posts that attract particularly potentially defamatory comments, increase moderation efforts for a period. This may include turning off comments for a period, for instance outside of work hours.

Publishing comments after moderation

• If the platform allows it, publish comments by third parties (made in ‘real time’) only after a moderator has approved them. This is not available on social media paid advertising.

Hide Replies

• Tweet authors have the option to hide replies to their tweets. When a tweet author hides a reply, the author of the reply will not be notified.

Decide not to publish the post

• If the post is expected to draw large amounts of backlash and your team does not have the resourcing to adequately monitor and moderate responses, consider not publishing the post.

Direct messaging

If your pages have direct messaging turned on, you should consider setting out monitoring strategies in your community guidelines and moderation guide.

For example, planning potential actions required when a member of the public messages the page and their contact details are needed for additional support to an inquiry.