Can it be true…? Facebook look as though they are bringing in the ability to ban comments on updates to pages.
The widely reported move looks as though it is being introduced after a court ruling in Australia which found that page admins were legally responsible for comments.
Understandably, some admins will be responding with glee at this news.
It must be tough to switch on the laptop at 8am and we faced with a wall of crap from anti-vaxxers. people complaining about potholes, too many bins, not enough bins and a load of other things beside.
So, switch off comments as default?
Some will undoubtedbly say ‘yes please!’ to this news.
But it got me thinking to how this may impact on the delivery of your message.
Blocking comments will undoubtedly see less interactions with a post. There’ll be no too-ing and frow-ing of conversation and debate either in support or against.
So what?
Well, trouble is, comments and discussion scores really well with the Facebook algorithm that enables your post to float higher organically into more people’s timelines. No comments? No algorythmic brownie points.
There’s the argument, and I’ve some time for that, that says that organic reach is so blunted these days anyway it probably won’t make loads of difference.
You’ve also got the additional issue is the accusation that your organisation are acting against he spirit of democracy. Look, everyone! It’s cancel culture! You bunch of snowflakes! There may be something in this but this kind of shouting sort of underlines the need to remove comments in the first place.
Besides, Twitter did something like this recently when they gave the ability to limit who replies to posts and the sky didn’t fall in.
Besu
Besides from organic reach you do have two other ways to boost your reach. You have boosted posts that involve you spending money and you also have the steps you take to drop the post into a Facebook group, too.
The bottom, line in all of this is that blocking comments isn’t without impact on your communications.
You’ll need to balance that on a case-by-case basis before you post.