Your profile is your decision

Why would you tolerate offensive comments that affect your reputation? 

We live in the era of Facebook. Everybody uses Facebook — politicians, actors, pop stars, but also we — not widely known people. Each and every user of Facebook has their own audience and usually the audience is growing. Yes, it’s good, everybody wants to be heard by millions. But as the essential audience is growing, so is the group of so-called haters.

I’m pretty sure you’ve seen a hater-in-action not once and not twice in your life. They’re everywhere.

A blogger writes about the sponsored cooperation with some company? In a half of the comments the blogger is rubbished and called a corruptible traitor. HTC teases a new smartphone? Staunch Samsung users will do what they think they ought to do.

And the real problem is: what to do with such people? Well, the opinions are divided. The first group of people ignores them. Doesn’t respond to haters’ comments like they don’t exist, hoping that it will make them go away. Until recently, I thought it was the right method. But then I realised that the number of haters of mine is growing too. And that it actually bothers me. It was a time when I understood what drives the people who belong to the second group. They remove hostile comments and block intrusive commenters. Now I know the reason — they just want to have some peace.

Does it work?

Imagine the following scenario: somebody who never heard about you before, discovers your Facebook profile. They browse your timeline, read posts and comments. And now, if you strictly moderate your comments leaving only the relevant ones, your timeline looks professional and encouraging to subscribe. But imagine you have a few thousand of followers and you don’t moderate the comments. There is practically no chance for a relevant discussion between you and “these real” subscribers.

What about blogs?

Actually, there’s exactly the same situation. Look at The Verge. Have you ever seen any offensive or non-relevant comment on this website? No. A bunch of people reads every comment posted on Verge and simply remove the ones that don’t meet the rules.

Dear Reader,

Do not be afraid to clean up your profile. Your profile belongs to you and only you can decide what’s going to be shown there. You have the right to remove all the comments you don’t like and do not hesitate to do what you ought to do.

Yours faithfully,
M.