Using the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Google+, YouTube and Instagram we communicate with each other instantly, sharing thoughts, links and photos across time zones and continents. However, not all interaction on the internet can be positive and sometimes people can leave comments on your posts that you’d rather they didn’t. Thankfully, the makers of social media have made it easy to expunge any negative or abusive comments you might receive. Here’s how to delete comments (see also How to use Facebook’s Privacy Check-Up tool and unfriend people)
How to delete comments: Facebook
To delete comments on the web version of Facebook, simply mouse over the comment you’d like to remove, and click the ‘x’ that appears on the right-hand side.
In the iOS app, simply tap the comment and click delete…
…and for Android just swap the tap for a long press.
How to delete comments: Instagram
To remove a comment from the iOS version of Instagram, simply tap on the comment, swipe it to the left, tap the bin icon, and select Delete.
Android users simply need to tap the speech bubble icon below the comments and tap on the comment in question to bring up the option to delete.
How to delete comments: Twitter
Twitter works in a slightly different way to many other social networks in that other users cannot comment directly on your posts, but instead can only reply via their own, separate post. As such, you cannot delete another users reply in the same you can on a platform like Facebook. Instead, the best way to get rid of negative comments is to block the offending user, to ‘mute’ future tweets from them, and in extreme cases to also report them for spam or abusive language. You can do this in iOS by long-pressing on the tweet in question to bring up the menu with these options.
In the Android app, click on the tweet in question, then click the options button in the top-right hand corner to open the menu.
How to delete comments: YouTube
Navigate to the comment you’d like to remove from a video, click the drop-down options arrow in the top-right hand corner of the comment, and then click remove.
How to delete comments: Google+
To delete comments from a Google+ stream, simply find the comment, click the ‘x’ in the top-right corner and then click delete to confirm.
