Facebook is a huge social media platform and hence it isn’t surprising to see spam, hateful and disrespectful comments on public posts. In an attempt to make conversations on public posts more meaningful, Facebook has started ranking comments in the past few months. The company has incorporated a number of signals to show comments that are most relevant to users. This change, however, only applies to comments on public posts from profiles and pages with a lot of followers.
Most relevant comments displayed by default
While Facebook’s move to show relevant and quality comments make sense, a lot of users hate this particular feature. That’s because Facebook shows the most relevant comments by default on public posts that qualifies for comment ranking. Moreover, the ranking of public comments is entirely forced upon and Facebook provides no setting to change it either. Hence, if you want to view all comments or the newest comments, then you have to navigate to the top and select your preference every time on every single post.
It’s certainly annoying to see that end users have no control over the comments they want to see by default. Fortunately, a Facebook profile owner or a page admin has the ability to enable or disable the comment ranking system for their profile or page. By doing so, they can choose to either display the most relevant comments by default or the most recent comments first.
Without further ado, let’s see how you can turn off most relevant on Facebook for your profile or page. In addition, here’s how you can manually change the ranking order of comments on a public post.
Changing the order of Facebook comments
As you might have noticed, Most Relevant is the default selection for comments on popular public profiles and pages. You can, however, change the sort order of comments on a post but you have to do it every time to see unfiltered comments.
To do so, tap the “Most Relevant” dropdown box at the top of the comment section.
Here you will see three choices – Most Relevant, Newest, and All Comments. Select the option that you find appropriate. For instance, select ‘All Comments‘ if you want to see all comments on Facebook.
Unfortunately, the change is temporary and you will be forced to see the most relevant comments on every page unless the page admin or profile owner has chosen to display the most recent comments by default.
How to Turn off most relevant for your profile or page
The comment ranking is automatically enabled for all pages and popular profiles. What’s noteworthy is that one can easily turn off the comment ranking option for their respective profile or Facebook Page. This will turn off most relevant and the page will display comments in chronological order by default.
To turn off comment ranking, follow the steps below.
For Pages and Profiles (On a computer)
- Visit your Facebook profile or page.
- Click the dropdown button at the top-right corner and go to Settings & privacy > Settings.
- Under Settings, go to “Public Posts” in the sidebar on the left.
- Scroll down the page and click the ‘Edit‘ button next to “Comment Ranking”.
- Select “Off” in the dropdown box and the changes will be saved instantly.
Using Facebook App (On iPhone & Android)
- Go to the Menu tab.
- Scroll down and navigate to Settings & Privacy > Settings.
- Under Audience and Visibility, tap “Followers and Public Content”.
- Scroll down to the bottom and turn off the toggle for ‘Comment Ranking’.
We hope you found this article helpful. Don’t forget to explore our Facebook and Messenger section for more interesting tips and tricks.
ALSO READ: How to become a Top Fan on Facebook
How does one express this concern to the Facebook gods? What logic is behind making \”relevant\” the default? All of the comments are out of order. So when you receive a notification that someone replied on a comment thread that you\’re involved in, you don\’t know who said what when unless you compare the time passed on each comment or change the the entire comment section to \”newest\”, which then buries the specific comment thread you were just at with all the other comment threads. If you go back to notifications and come back in order to find your thread, the comment section is set to \”relevant\” again. It\’s a catch-22 and a complete time waster trying to find what you\’re looking for.
Easily. Un-god the facebook gods by deleting your account.
This.
Mine was already off and was showing relevant only… this did not work whatsoever.
Same here. It was already off and did not work.
Same, which had me wondering wtf im doing wrong after reading this
Any tips for when this starts to happen in a facebook group?? I can only find for pages/profiles. Unfortunately, comment ranking started like 5 days ago in my group and only for my members, not myself. Any help would be much appreciated as its been a real pain!!!
I have turned comment ranking “off” in every possible way, and it’s had no effect at all.
Same
same here it’s always been set to off and yet still I get relevant
same
just a rehash of old outdated advice
“Relevant and high quality”, by FB’s standards.
More censorship, in other words. Each time that is printed to the page, it should be inside a button that allows you to display every comment, regardless of what FB thinks.
It doesn’t work
The option to select “all comments” has disappeared.
Noticed the same….. not on all pages but almost all political and covid related.
Like everyone else, the drop down/pop up box to allow me to choose ‘all comments’ has completely disappeared and I’m stuck on the default ‘most relevant’ setting. What idiot at FB figured we wouldn’t want to see all comments, anyway?
This does not work at all. All it does is open up your entire profile to public media.
This does not work. I have comment ranking disabled and still see “most relevant” by default.
I have searched everywhere to change the “Most Relevant” setting but can find nothing. People reply to a comment that I made and I cannot reply to them because it’s been filtered out. This is ridiculous. I have searched everywhere in “Settings” and see nothing like that is shown here. Also on the “Comments” page there is no drop down that says “Most Relevant” only that that is what is set. It’s so frustrating
Same here, anyone who disagrees with the Facebook overlord’s view or opinion is filtered out and sent to purgatory where the comment still technically exists, but can’t bee seen or interacted with.
I have tried this, my comment ranking is already off but it still comes up saying “most relevant” is selected and can’t see these comments.
Now what do I do???
It also seems like you can no longer edit your messages.
Hey Facebook… I get that you don’t THINK my comments are valid and therefore not “Most Relevant”, but if you send me a notice that somebody replied to my comment… well… THAT IS THE DEFINITION of relevant. Let me see it. Also, which developer thought it was a good idea to think we don’t want to see all comments? You see, those of us doing research actually DO care about what other people think. I know, I know… you just want to give us consumable content so you get the ad revenue, but that makes you a publisher, not a platform per Section 230 of the Communications Act. Let’s get with the program. Be a platform. Let us communicate and we’ll get you the ad clicks.
Exactly!!
I just want to turn off “Most Relevant” comments and have the “All Comments” option activated all the time for anything posted on any topic. Can you walk me through (IN PLAIN ENGLISH) how to accomplish that goal??????
Very often, people reply to shit I post but I cannot find it in order to follow up. It is HIGHLY annoying.
Facebook is showing only Oldest comments. You try to see All comments but it stays on Oldest.
I noticed, when the “All-Comments” button dissapeared, you can get it back by clicking the “place comment” button a few times. Sometimes it takes 5 or 6 times, sometimes just 1 or 2. But every time you visit another post or page, it’s back to “most relevant” ?????
Yup
for someone who got “most relevant” when comment ranking off
I got “most relevant” when comment ranking set to off
to fix this I turn it on and then turn it off
and it change from most relevant to Top comment/All comment
Well, Mark Z, this is one of many reasons why TikTok is taking over. Users are being encumbered by silly logic like this! Who wouldn’t want to see all comments? And who are you to decide what is most relevant or not? Too much control in our social interactions means moving to another platform. And thank the internet gods for that!
This does not work. It was already off. I turned it on to see whether it made a difference. It did not change anything.
Doesn’t work… and can we just get to the point, that FB is clearly using this as a means of censorship.
No ifs, ands or buts …
Almost everytime I manually switch the setting to “all comments”, I see RELEVANT comments that have been left out… in other words, FB is actually censoring that particular User… and it is unfair, and form of Totalitarian “thought control”.
Setting does not exist.
Yes I understand the technical approach on how this is implemented. The issue is that the algorithm is biased against conservatives and their typical stances. Nothing more than censorship, plain and simple. Zero accountability.
Switch to all comments but i still have to open threads, which seems to revert back to relevant EVERY TIME
Doesn’t work