Facebook Page Commenting Changes

Posted by: Matthew Snodgrass in Social Media Insights & Trends on April 13, 2011

Within the next couple of weeks, Facebook will be announcing changes to how their Facebook Pages work, specifically when it comes to commenting. Currently, Page administrators have the ability to disable comments to Wall posts, photos, and videos. Certain companies have taken advantage of this, since they work in highly regulated industries and would find it difficult to deal with open comments from the Facebook community.

Two industries in particular — pharmaceutical and financial services — are regulated by various government entities that mandate the ways in which they must deal with information from the general public. Those “charged” topics can include: financial advice, stock recommendations, adverse (drug) events, off-label use of drugs, etc. In the world of pharma, for example, when these topics are discovered online, it is incumbent upon the drug maker to report that to the FDA (based on certain criteria). On a pharmaceutical company’s Facebook Page, they lock down that conversation by disabling commenting on the Page’s Wall posts, photos, and videos.

Facebook will be changing their policy when it comes to disabling comments. At some point, possibly as early as mid-June, Facebook will be opening up comments on all pharma Pages with the exceptions of:

  • Pages that promote, talk about, or support prescription drugs or devices
  • Pages that focus on a disease state where there is only one prescribed treatment (even if the Page doesn’t mention the treatment)
  • Disease-state/therapeutic area Pages that have the PI/ISI on the Page

This means that corporate Pages, general disease awareness Pages, and unbranded campaign Pages will have their comments re-enabled for their Walls, photos, and videos. Other details of this change are detailed in the below presentation.

By: Matthew Snodgrass

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13 comments

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  • http://www.wcgworld.com Matthew Snodgrass

    @sherri Unless it’s a prescribed medical drug or device, you won’t be able to disable user comments. However, as always, you will be able to disable user posts to your Wall (just not comments to YOUR Wall posts).

  • Sherri

    I work for a school district in marketing. Can we still block comments and posts?

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  • http://www.doseofdigital.com Jonathan Richman

    Where’s the latest on this? You said a couple weeks in your post. So far, I haven’t seen this info anywhere else.

    • http://www.wcgworld.com Matthew Snodgrass

      Hi Jonathan- Wish I could update you more, but things are still in flux. Sorry for the deflection :)

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  • Jonathan Richman

    So, you’re saying that Facebook is going to open commenting regardless of how the admin wants the page set up except for companies in these two industries, right? If so, you’re the first to report on this and we haven’t heard this from our Facebook reps. What’s your source for this information?

    • http://www.wcgworld.com Matthew Snodgrass

      We found this out during the planning stages of developing a new Page for one of our clients. More info to come.

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  • http://socialmediaexplorer.com Jason Falls

    Just to clarify, you’re reporting here that Facebook is going to force brand/fan pages in one industry to display comments while letting the rest of the world choose whether or not to allow them? That doesn’t smell right. If it’s true, regardless of the smell test, it is certainly a potential civil suit topic. Facebook may just be too big for the courts not to welcome the opportunity to stick their noses here. You can’t make rules for one group and not the other and get away with it much … unless you have antitrust exemption, which Facebook doesn’t. I’m no lawyer, but if I read your post/presso right, this just doesn’t seem kosher.

    • http://www.wcgworld.com Matthew Snodgrass

      Hi Jason. No, not in that way. It’s that Facebook will be opening up Page comments for everyone with those few exceptions.