The Federal Trade Commission's Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, was announced on August 14, 2024 and took effect on October 21, 2024. It is the first federal rule aimed squarely at fake reviews, and it matters for a specific reason: before it existed, the FTC had to prove a fake review was deceptive under general law, case by case. The rule makes the conduct itself a violation, with civil penalties attached.
Section 465.2 bars writing, creating, or selling fake or false reviews, including reviews generated by AI and reviews attributed to people who do not exist. Section 465.4 covers paying for reviews conditioned on a particular sentiment: a discount, a free product, or a gift in exchange for five stars. Section 465.7 covers suppressing reviews by intimidation or unfounded legal threats, the practice of burying bad reviews with a lawyer's letter instead of fixing the product. Civil penalties run up to 53,088 dollars per violation under the January 2025 inflation adjustment.
Two years in, the record is thin, and that is the honest thing to say about it. Enforcement in the first two years totals ten warning letters sent on December 22, 2025, one administrative settlement, and one pending federal lawsuit. The settlement is TruHeight, with a final order on July 15, 2026: a 4 million dollar judgment, partially suspended upon payment of 750,000 dollars. The lawsuit is Premium Home Service, filed with the Illinois Attorney General in May 2026. Total cash collected under the rule in 24 months: 750,000 dollars.
That number looks small against the scale of the problem. Amazon proactively blocked more than 275 million suspected fake reviews in 2024 alone, which is a measure of volume, not of enforcement. The rule's real weight is not in the cases filed so far but in the penalty arithmetic: 53,088 dollars per violation, and a review farm that writes thousands of fake reviews is looking at exposure that dwarfs any settlement to date. In the UK, fake reviews have been a banned practice under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 since April 6, 2025, so the same conduct now carries risk on both sides of the Atlantic.
For a store owner, the rule changes the review problem from a marketing question into a compliance one. Buying reviews, conditioning a discount on five stars, and threatening reviewers with legal action are all now per-violation offenses, not just bad practice. The reverse also matters: a competitor flooding your listing with fake negative reviews is now violating a rule with a number on it, and a complaint to the FTC cites a section instead of a general grievance.
The practical move is unglamorous. Stop any program that ties an incentive to a rating instead of to the act of reviewing. Audit the reviews you already have for patterns that look purchased, and remove the ones you paid for before anyone else finds them. And when a fake review hits your listing, report it through the platform's tools with the rule cited, because the platforms now have a federal standard to measure the complaint against. The rule has not cleaned up reviews in two years. It has made the cleanup a legal obligation instead of a courtesy, and that is a slower kind of change.
Keep reading: The FTC Click-to-Cancel Rule Is Dead. The Obligations Are Not, MFA Fatigue: The Push Notification Attack That Wears People Down, and The FTC Impersonation Rule: What It Changed for Fake Brands cover the nearby cases in this series.
Rule 465 bans writing or selling fake reviews, including AI-generated ones and ones attributed to people who do not exist, paying for reviews conditioned on a particular sentiment, and suppressing reviews through intimidation or unfounded legal threats.
It was announced on August 14, 2024 and took effect on October 21, 2024. Civil penalties run up to 53,088 dollars per violation under the January 2025 inflation adjustment.
Enforcement in the first two years is thin: ten warning letters in December 2025, one settlement with TruHeight for a 4 million dollar judgment partially suspended on payment of 750,000 dollars, and one pending lawsuit against Premium Home Service.
Yes. Section 465.2 explicitly covers fake reviews generated by AI, as well as reviews attributed to people who do not exist.