A federal rule now bans buying, faking, or hiding reviews

The record

The Federal Trade Commission approved a final trade regulation rule on the use of consumer reviews and testimonials on August 14, 2024, and published it in the Federal Register on August 22, 2024, codified at 16 CFR Part 465, with an effective date of October 21, 2024. The rule followed a November 2022 advance notice of proposed rulemaking and a July 2023 proposed rule; the FTC's own summary states it “prohibits selling or purchasing fake consumer reviews or testimonials, buying positive or negative consumer reviews, certain insiders creating consumer reviews or testimonials without clearly disclosing their relationships, creating a company-controlled review website that falsely purports to provide independent reviews, certain review suppression practices, and selling or purchasing fake indicators of social media influence.”

What the documents establish

The rule's text sets out separately numbered prohibitions rather than one general standard: Section 465.2 bars writing, selling, purchasing, or disseminating a review or testimonial that materially misrepresents that the reviewer exists, used the product, or had the represented experience; Section 465.4 bars buying positive or negative reviews; Section 465.5 addresses undisclosed reviews from a business's own officers, managers, employees, or their immediate relatives; Section 465.6 addresses company-controlled sites that falsely appear independent; Section 465.7 addresses suppressing negative reviews; and Section 465.8 addresses buying or selling fake indicators of social-media influence such as followers or views. Because this is a Section 18 trade regulation rule rather than a case-by-case Section 5 enforcement standard, the rule's preamble ties violations of these specific provisions to the Commission's unfair-or-deceptive-practices authority, distinct from an ordinary case-by-case enforcement action.

The operating read

Editorially, the insider-disclosure and suppression provisions reach further into ordinary marketing practice than the headline “no fake reviews” framing suggests: a founder who asks an employee's spouse to post a review without disclosing the relationship, or who removes negative reviews from a company-run site while representing the displayed reviews as complete, falls within specific, separately enforceable provisions, not just a general prohibition on lying.

What to check before you decide

Before relying on customer reviews or testimonials in marketing, check the following against the rule's own text:

• Does any review from an employee, manager, or their immediate relative disclose that relationship clearly and conspicuously, as the rule defines that term?
• Does the process for displaying or removing reviews on a company-controlled site ever suppress reviews based on their negativity while representing the displayed set as complete?
• Has the business purchased, sold, or procured any indicator of social-media influence, such as followers, views, or likes, that does not reflect real activity?

This describes the rule's own prohibitions and effective date; it does not address whether any specific marketing practice violates it.