Facebook Comments Not Showing or Loading

"Facebook comments aren't showing" describes at least two completely different problems with completely different fixes, which is why so much advice on this fails: it treats them as one issue.

Not showing means the comment section works, but comments you expect to be there aren't visible. Something is filtering or hiding them.

Not loading means the comment section itself is broken, a spinner that never resolves, a blank space where comments should be, or a "View more comments" button that does nothing. Something is failing technically.

The first is usually a settings or moderation issue, and the fix is in Facebook. The second is usually a client-side or connection issue and the fix is on your device. This guide separates them, gives you a diagnostic to work out which you have, and walks through each cause in the order most likely to be responsible.

Start here: which problem do you have?

Two quick checks tell you which branch to follow.

Can you see any comments at all? If you can see some comments but not all of them, or not a specific one, that's a not showing problem; jump to the next section. If the section is completely blank, endlessly spinning, or throwing an error, that's a not loading problem.

Does the same post work elsewhere? Open the post in a different browser, on a different device, or on mobile data instead of wifi. If it loads fine there, it's a local technical issue on your original device. If it's broken everywhere, it's something about the post, the account, or Facebook itself.

That thirty-second test saves you from clearing your cache to fix a problem that was actually a moderation filter.

Not showing: the six causes, in order of likelihood

1. Comment ranking is filtering them (most common by far)

Facebook applies comment ranking by default, showing a curated selection rather than everything. On a busy post this can hide the large majority of comments, and nothing in the interface tells you it's happening.

Fix: find the small sort label above the first comment, usually reading "Most relevant," and switch it to "All comments" or "Newest." The hidden comments appear instantly.

Note: this applies per post and reverts on its own regularly, so if comments seemed complete yesterday and don't today, check the filter first. If you manage a Page, you can disable comment ranking entirely in Page settings so all comments show by default.

If you're missing comments, this is the cause about eight times out of ten. Rule it out before anything else.

2. The comment was hidden by an admin

A Page admin can hide a comment, which removes it from public view while leaving it visible to its author and their friends. This produces the classic argument where someone insists they commented, can screenshot it, and you still can't find it, because you're each seeing a different version of the thread.

Fix (if it's your Page): open your moderation tools and look at hidden comments. You can unhide from there.

Fix (if it isn't): nothing you can do from outside. Ask the Page owner.

3. A keyword or profanity filter caught it

Pages can auto-hide comments containing blocked words, and Facebook's profanity filter does the same. These catch legitimate comments constantly, including giveaway entries with unusual formatting, repeated phrases, or words that happen to be on a list.

Fix: check your Page's moderation settings and blocked-words list, and review the held or hidden comments queue. Loosening an over-aggressive filter often solves a recurring "entries keep disappearing" problem.

4. Facebook's spam detection filtered it

Separate from your own filters, Facebook automatically suppresses comments it reads as spam. New accounts, accounts posting identical text repeatedly, and comments with lots of links or tags are common targets, which is unfortunate for giveaways since "same phrase, many people" is exactly what a keyword entry produces.

Fix: check your spam folder in Page moderation tools if you own the Page. There isn't much recourse otherwise, though comments sometimes reappear.

5. Blocking or privacy limits

If someone has blocked you, their comments are invisible to you even on public posts, and vice versa. On posts shared with a limited audience, you may not see comments from people outside that audience.

Fix: none, structurally. If a specific person's comments are consistently invisible to you and to nobody else, blocking is the likely explanation.

6. The comment was deleted

Removed by its author or a moderator. This is the only one that's permanent, and it's also the one people assume first when it's usually last.

Fix: none. It's gone.

Not loading: the technical causes

If the comment section itself won't render, work through these roughly in order.

Refresh, then force-close. A simple reload fixes a surprising share of comment-loading failures. If that doesn't work, force-close the app entirely and reopen, rather than just switching away from it.

Check whether Facebook is down. Outages happen, and comment loading is a common casualty of partial outages where the rest of the site works. If comments are broken across multiple posts, devices, and accounts, it's probably not you.

Clear the app cache or browser cache. On Android, clear the Facebook app's cache in your device settings. On iOS, offloading and reinstalling the app is the equivalent. In a browser, clear the cache or try an incognito window, which loads without cached data or extensions.

Update the app. Comment rendering breaks on old app versions with some regularity, and updating resolves it. Enable automatic updates if this recurs.

Disable browser extensions. Ad blockers, privacy extensions, and script blockers frequently break Facebook's comment loading, since comments load dynamically through requests those tools sometimes block. Test in incognito mode with extensions disabled, and if that fixes it, whitelist Facebook in the offending extension.

Try a different connection. Switch between wifi and mobile data. Comments load in batches after the initial page render, so a connection that's fine for loading the post can still fail on the comment requests.

Try a different browser or device. This isolates whether the problem is the platform or your setup.

Check for very long threads. Posts with tens of thousands of comments genuinely strain the interface, and "View more comments" can stall or fail on huge threads regardless of your device. This is a real limitation rather than a fault.

The giveaway-specific version of this problem

There's a scenario worth calling out because it silently produces unfair draws.

You run a giveaway, the post has 500 comments, and when you go to pick a winner your screen shows 60. If you draw from those 60, you've excluded 88% of your entrants without knowing it, and your published rules almost certainly promised a random selection from all eligible entries. The ranking filter did that, not a bug, and it left no trace.

The same thing happens on a smaller scale with pagination: you click "View more comments" a few times, it stops loading (connection hiccup, thread length, an extension), and you assume you've reached the end when you've reached a failure.

The robust answer is not to draw from the rendered view at all. A comment picker reads the comments from the post itself rather than from what your browser managed to display, which means ranking filters and loading failures don't silently shrink your entry pool. FB Picker works from a pasted public post URL with no login, pulls the comments, strips duplicate commenters, and selects the winner at random from the full eligible set. If you're awarding several prizes or want backups, you can pick multiple winners in one pass. The practical benefit is that you never have to trust that your screen showed you everything, which, as this whole article demonstrates, it frequently doesn't.

If a picker also can't see the comments, that's diagnostic in itself: it almost always means the post isn't public, since URL-based tools can only read publicly visible content.

Preventing recurrence

A few habits reduce how often this bites you.

If you own a Page, turn off comment ranking so the filtered view stops being your default. Review your blocked keywords list periodically, since over-aggressive filters quietly eat legitimate comments and giveaway entries. Keep the app updated and clear its cache occasionally. For browsers, whitelist Facebook in your ad blocker if you use one for work. And for giveaways specifically, make the post public before you launch, both so URL-based tools can read it, and so you're not troubleshooting privacy settings on draw day.

Most importantly, build the habit of checking the sort filter every time you look at a comment section that matters. It's the single most common cause; it's invisible, and it resets itself.

The bottom line

"Comments not showing" and "comments not loading" are different problems. If you can see some comments but not all, it's almost always Facebook's comment ranking filtering them, so switch the sort from "Most relevant" to "All comments" or "Newest," and note that this reverts on its own and applies per post. If comments are still missing after that, work through admin-hidden comments, keyword and profanity filters, spam detection, blocking and privacy limits, and finally deletion, which is the only permanent one. If the section won't render at all, that's technical: refresh, force-close, check for outages, clear the cache, update the app, disable extensions, switch connection, and try another device. And if you're picking a giveaway winner, don't trust the rendered view, because a filtered or half-loaded thread produces an unfair draw with no visible symptom. Reading the post directly through a dependable free comment picker and giveaway tool, and running every contest the same way with a consistent random comment picker for giveaways workflow, means the comments you draw from are the comments that actually exist.