Building an audience on social media means putting your work in front of more people – and, inevitably, some of those people won’t like it. The bigger your audience gets, the more likely you are to encounter negative comments amid the encouragement and likes.
For aspiring content creators, influencers, and user-generated content (UGC) creators, learning how to deal with haters on social media is less about developing an impenetrable skin and more about knowing when to engage, when to step away, and when to use the tools available to protect your space.
Not every negative comment is hate either. Constructive criticism can be useful feedback, while a rude comment may simply be something you can ignore. More serious abuse, threats, or persistent targeting require a different response.
Here’s how to deal with negative comments on social media while keeping your focus on your career.
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When you’re starting your content creator career, your audience may consist mostly of friends, family, and people actively seeking out your content, such as other creators in the same niche. As your following grows, your posts can reach people who have no existing connection with you and who may have very different opinions, tastes, and expectations. That means more comments, but also a wider range of reactions.
Someone disagreeing with your opinion, pointing out a mistake, or saying they didn’t enjoy a piece of content isn’t automatically a troll. If the criticism is specific and delivered in good faith, consider whether there’s something useful you can take from it.
Personal insults, deliberately provocative comments, and repeated attempts to get a reaction are different. You don’t owe every commenter a response.
How to deal with online trolls? Make it less stressful by moderating proactively, rather than waiting until your comments section becomes overwhelming.
The top social media platforms for influencers offer tools that let creators filter comments, restrict interactions, and report abusive content.
Meta’s bullying and harassment community standard sets out the types of content its platforms (including Facebook and Instagram) prohibit, but platform-wide moderation is a separate issue – and the company has faced criticism for its handling of hate speech and the protection of marginalised communities.
On Instagram, Hidden Words can filter potentially offensive words, phrases, and emojis from comments and message requests, while Limits can temporarily restrict interactions from people who don’t follow you or have only recently followed you. You can also use Restrict to limit how someone interacts with your account without blocking them, or block an account altogether. Instagram’s help centre and Meta’s safety tools outline the options available.
On TikTok, for example, there is a range of moderation tools. Creators can filter comments, use keyword searches to find violative text, and activate Creator Care Mode, which can hide potentially offensive or inappropriate comments for review.
YouTube’s community guidelines similarly allow creators to hold potentially inappropriate comments for review, add blocked words and phrases, limit who can comment, and hide individual users from their channel.
The exact names and availability of features can change, so it’s worth checking your platform’s current privacy and moderation settings.
Consider setting up filters for:
- Slurs or abusive language you don’t want to appear in your comments
- Recurring insults or phrases used by people targeting your content
- Spam or suspicious links
- Words relating to personal information you don’t want discussed publicly
You can also remove comments, restrict or hide accounts, turn comments off for particular posts, and report content that breaches a platform’s rules.
Think of these tools as part of running your creator business, not as an admission that you can’t handle criticism.
When a nasty comment appears, take a moment before deciding what to do. A simple four-step check can help.
1. Is there anything useful here?
If someone has criticised your content, ask yourself whether there’s a legitimate point buried underneath the delivery.
Maybe your video contains an error. Maybe your caption is unclear. Maybe someone has misunderstood what you were trying to say. You don’t have to agree with the commenter, but useful criticism can help you improve your work.
If there’s nothing constructive to take from the comment, you don’t have to keep thinking about it.
2. Does this person actually need a response?
Often the best response to a deliberately provocative comment is no response at all. Engaging with someone who is clearly trying to get a reaction can turn one unpleasant comment into a much longer argument, and potentially expose the exchange to even more people.
You can delete or hide the comment, mute or restrict the account, or simply move on.
Remember that your comments section is part of your public professional presence. Before responding, consider whether your reply contributes something useful to the conversation, shuts it down with panache (if that’s your style), or simply keeps a fight going.
3. Keep it brief if you respond.
Sometimes a response is appropriate, particularly when someone has raised a genuine question or misunderstood something you’ve posted. If you feel it deserves a reply, keep it factual and professional. You don’t need to prove that you’re right, deliver the perfect comeback, or convince the commenter to change their mind.
If your reply turns into a conversation and the back and forth turns increasingly hostile, you can stop responding. There’s also no requirement to publicly defend every aspect of yourself or your work.
4. Know when to report.
If a comment contains threats, targeted abuse, discriminatory content, personal information, or other material that violates a platform’s rules, use the platform’s reporting tools to flag it.
For more serious incidents, take screenshots and save relevant usernames, URLs, and messages before you block or delete anything. That creates a record if you later need to report the behaviour elsewhere. The eSafety Commissioner specifically recommends collecting evidence before blocking in cases of serious online abuse.
5. Protect your peace too.
Knowing how to deal with hate comments isn’t only about what button to press. It’s also about deciding how much access strangers get to your attention.
If checking your comments immediately after posting makes you anxious, give yourself some distance. You could set a particular time to moderate comments rather than repeatedly refreshing your notifications throughout the day.
As your account grows, you may also be able to ask a trusted friend, collaborator, or professional moderator to help manage comments, particularly during a livestream, product launch, or post that attracts unusually high engagement.
It can also help to remember that a comment about your content isn’t necessarily a verdict on you as a person. You made the video, wrote the post, or appeared in the content. The audience gets to decide whether they like it. Those are separate things.
And if a particular platform or comments section is affecting your well-being, it’s perfectly reasonable to step away for a while.
There’s an important difference between encountering an unpleasant comment and being deliberately targeted online.
For Australian creators, eSafety defines adult cyber abuse as seriously harmful online content directed at a person aged 18 or over, where the content is intended to cause serious harm and is menacing, harassing, or offensive. The threshold is deliberately high and does not cover ordinary criticism, strong opinions, or hurt feelings.
Serious online abuse can include threats, cyberstalking, doxxing (publishing someone’s personal information), repeated threatening messages, or encouraging others to target someone.
If you’re experiencing serious online abuse, save the evidence and report the content to the platform first. If the platform doesn’t remove material that meets the relevant threshold, Australian adults can report eligible cases to the eSafety Commissioner.
Threats to your safety or the safety of family and friends should also be reported to police. If you’re in immediate danger, call Triple Zero (000).
You don’t have to figure out the distinction between trolling and harassment by yourself. The important thing is to document serious behaviour, use the reporting tools available, and seek help when the situation goes beyond an unpleasant comment.
Negative comments are an unavoidable part of building a public-facing career, but they don’t have to dictate how you use social media.
Set your boundaries early, make use of moderation tools, and develop a consistent approach to criticism. Most importantly, remember why you’re posting in the first place: to create, connect with an audience, and build your career.
