Restoring a hidden or deleted comment

A hidden comment can be restored: approve it and the tool un-hides it on Meta. A comment that was genuinely deleted cannot be restored — but on Facebook and Instagram the Delete action is not supported, so the tool never deletes Meta comments in the first place. In practice, “restoring a comment” means un-hiding a comment that a Flag action (or a manual flag) hid.

The short version

A comment is hidden, not deleted, when its status is Flagged. Open the Inbox, find the comment, and choose Approve. That marks it Approved and un-hides it on Meta. Nothing is permanently lost when a comment is hidden.

Why a comment is hidden

Only one thing hides a comment on Meta: the Flag action. When a workflow branch runs Flag, the tool hides the comment on the platform (it sets is_hidden=true on Facebook and hide=true on Instagram) and sets the comment’s status to Flagged. The comment stays visible to you in the Inbox; it is only hidden from the public on the post.

Because Flag is a hide and not a delete, it is reversible.

Input comment

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Matched condition

Keywords: "free", "giveaway" (match any)

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Resulting action Flag

Flag hid this comment on Facebook and set its status to Flagged. Approving it later un-hides it.

Find the comment in the log

The moderation surface is the Inbox. Hidden comments carry the Flagged status, so filter to them first.

1. Open the Inbox and stay on the Comments tab (it’s the default).
2. Apply the Flagged filter (or the Flagged preset) to list every hidden comment.
3. Use the search box to narrow by comment text or author if the list is long.
4. Confirm you have the right comment by its author and text before you act.

To see what hid the comment — which workflow and which action — open Analytics → Audit Log (the default tab on the Analytics page). Each entry records the workflow name and the action type. On the comment itself, the automation provenance chip shows the same workflow name and action.

Restore a hidden comment

Approving a flagged comment un-hides it on Meta. Approve is the human equivalent of the workflow Allow action, which reverses a hide.

1. In the Inbox, open the flagged comment you want to bring back.
2. Choose Approve.
3. The comment’s status changes to Approved, and the tool un-hides it on Meta (it sets is_hidden=false on Facebook and hide=false on Instagram).

The un-hide is carried out on Meta a few seconds after you approve, the same way other on-platform actions are dispatched.

If the comment keeps getting re-flagged

Un-hiding fixes the current comment, but the workflow that flagged it will flag the next matching comment too. If a Flag branch is too aggressive, adjust its condition or set the workflow to observe-only so its actions are simulated instead of sent to Meta. See How workflows work.

The delete caveat

Deletes are irreversible — and on Meta, the tool cannot delete at all

The Delete action is destructive and permanent by design: where a platform supports it, deleting a comment removes it and it cannot be restored. On Facebook and Instagram, Delete is not supported — the tool has no delete capability there, so a Delete action against a Meta comment does nothing and no comment is removed. There is nothing to restore in either case: on Meta nothing was deleted, and on a platform where a delete did run, the comment is gone for good. For a reversible way to take a comment down on Meta, use Flag (hide) instead of Delete.

If a comment is missing from a Facebook or Instagram post and it wasn’t hidden by the tool, it was removed on the platform itself (by the author, the Page, or Meta) — that is outside the tool and cannot be restored from here.

How restores appear in the log

After you approve a comment:

• Its status flips from Flagged to Approved in the Inbox. Find it again under the Approved filter.
• The action is written to the audit trail. Automated actions appear in Analytics → Audit Log with the workflow name and action type.

Screenshot — pending capture Analytics → Audit Log showing a moderation action in the trail

The Audit Log (Analytics → Audit Log) records moderation actions.

Related

• Actions reference
• How workflows work
• What happens while an account is disconnected
• Data access and storage