The 2024 Rule on Reviews the FTC Said Were Never Real

What the Rule Prohibits, and Who It Reaches

The FTC finalized its rule on fake and deceptive reviews in August 2024, publishing it in the Federal Register as a binding trade regulation rule — not guidance, not a policy statement, but an instrument carrying civil penalties for violation. The Commission had solicited comment on the proposal since 2022; the final text reflects revisions to that draft but retains its core prohibitions.

The rule bars companies from creating, buying, or disseminating consumer reviews written by people who do not exist, including reviews generated by artificial intelligence. It prohibits paying for positive reviews without clear disclosure, and it bans companies from suppressing negative reviews in a selective way — specifically, conditioning any benefit on a favorable review or using legal threats to silence dissatisfied customers. Insider reviews, meaning reviews written by company officers, employees, or their relatives, are prohibited unless the relationship is clearly and conspicuously disclosed.

A separate provision addresses what the rule calls review hijacking: repurposing reviews written about one product and attributing them to a materially different product. The Commission's statement of basis and purpose notes that this practice had appeared frequently enough in enforcement referrals to warrant an explicit prohibition.

The rule also governs companies that use third-party review platforms. A company cannot take steps to generate a lopsided distribution of reviews on such a platform — for example, by sending solicitation emails only to customers it already knows had a positive experience. The solicitation must reach a representative sample, not a curated one.

Civil penalties under the rule reach up to $51,744 per violation as of the rule's publication date, an amount subject to periodic adjustment. The FTC under Chair Lina Khan had argued in its notice of proposed rulemaking that existing section 5 authority over unfair or deceptive acts was insufficient on its own: a rule with penalty authority forces deterrence at scale rather than case-by-case.

The rule sits alongside the Commission's updated Endorsement Guides, revised in 2023, which address influencer disclosure obligations. The two documents are complementary rather than duplicative: the Endorsement Guides govern what must be disclosed when a relationship exists; the fake-reviews rule addresses the more fundamental question of whether a review reflects any real experience at all. Together they form the Commission's fullest articulation of what authentic consumer opinion is supposed to look like — and what it costs a company to manufacture a substitute.