Ban on fake and misleading consumer reviews will particularly impact e-commerce businesses and online platforms. Significant fines for non-compliance possible.

What has happened?

• New legislation to tackle fake and misleading reviews comes into force on 6 April 2025 under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act (DMCCA) (more on the DMCCA here).

• The new rules prohibit various acts of making, commissioning and publishing fake and misleading reviews and (importantly) impose a positive obligation on those who publish consumer reviews to take reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent the publication of – and to remove – fake and misleading reviews.

• The new rules cover almost every type of consumer review, whether of products, services, digital content or traders, whether online or off, whether of a business's own practices or another's, and whether applying to the practice itself or matters such as after-sales service. They apply to reviews in all forms including text, speech, aggregated data, stars, rankings and thumbs up/down.

• The new regime will capture a very broad range of operators, particularly e-commerce businesses and online platforms. As a minimum, those who publish consumer reviews will need to have a written policy in place and conduct a risk assessment as well as potentially implementing other actions. 

• While fake and misleading reviews could be (and have been) tackled under the 'old' (general) rules on unfair commercial practices, the new rules broaden and make express the requirements. The potential consequences of getting it wrong are also increasing, with the regulator, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), being given new powers to issue fines of up to £300k or 10% of a business's global worldwide turnover (whichever higher) for breaches (more here).

We look at the new rules on fake and misleading reviews, who they apply to, and what businesses need to do as a result. We weave in the draft guidance from the CMA on the new rules, as well as recent statements from the CMA on its enforcement priorities.

What practices are banned?

The commercial practices that are banned are the following (with relevant definitions dealt with separately in the next section).

Submitting fake consumer reviews or concealed incentivised reviews for publication

This includes providing them directly to traders for website posting or publishing them on websites or social media platforms. 

Commissioning others to submit (for publication) or write fake consumer reviews or concealed incentivised reviews

Commissioning includes any form of incentivisation by any means. This would include, for example, offering an existing customer a free or discounted product in exchange for a five-star review which is not reflective of their genuine experience of the item being reviewed. 

Publishing consumer reviews or consumer review information in a misleading way

This occurs where consumers are misled based on the information they are presented with or not presented with. Examples provided by the CMA include:

• Presenting reviews of a different product as relating to the product the consumer is considering (review hijacking).
• Suppressing or hiding negative reviews.

• Cherry-picking positive reviews for publication over negative ones.

• Highlighting certain reviews over others.
• Concealing incentivised reviews – such reviews should be clearly labelled without the consumer needing to 'find' the information.

• Displaying star ratings etc influenced by fake reviews without prompt updates following removal of identified fakes. 

• Ranking traders in a way that gives equal weight to incentivised and non-incentivised reviews. 

Offering services to traders for the doing or facilitating of any of the above

Examples include services that increase the chances of fake reviews being posted successfully by bypassing platform detection measures, or selling software-generated bot-written reviews disguised as genuine consumer feedback.

Publishing consumer reviews, or consumer review information, without taking reasonable and proportionate steps necessary to prevent the publication/removal of fake consumer reviews, false/misleading consumer review information and concealed incentivised reviews

While the CMA recognises that what constitutes reasonable and proportionate steps will vary from business to business, it says that all publishers will need to have a clear policy on the prevention and removal of these types of review, regularly assess the risks of such material appearing on their media, and take such other further proactive steps as are reasonable and proportionate to the need identified. These additional steps could include:

• Publishing policies which clearly prohibit these types of review.

• Developing and implementing adequate detection, investigation and sanction procedures.

• Keeping records of action taken. 

• Taking steps to prevent consumers from being misled.

• Conducting regular internal assessments of the effectiveness of prevention and removal processes and addressing any inadequacies.

Detailed guidance is provided in Annex B of the draft CMA guidance, particularly on the positive obligation to take reasonable and proportionate steps.

What are the definitions?

Consumer reviews

These are any reviews of a product/service, a trader or any other matter relevant to a transactional decision. The scope is very broad. It not only captures reviews of products/services themselves but also matters such as delivery and after-sales care. Reviews can take various forms including text, speech and graphic representations. They therefore include reviews such as marketing letters or adverts in print media, written blogs or comments posted under a product listing on a website, verbal opinions expressed in a video on a sharing platform, and graphic representations like a star rating appearing next to a trader's name in a search engine result or a thumbs up next to a "helpful" review.

Fake consumer reviews

Fake reviews are consumer reviews that claim to be based on genuine experiences but are not. These can be positive or negative. Fake positive reviews make false claims about satisfaction with a product or a trader, which could have the effect of boosting sales. Conversely, fake negative reviews could unjustly undermine competitors. A review is not fake merely because the trader who it is about does not like or agree with it.

Concealed incentivised reviews

Concealed incentivised reviews occur when reviewers receive some form of incentive but fail to disclose this fact transparently. The CMA has given some examples of forms of incentivisation: money, commissions, discounts, charges, "freebies", free stays and more. Incentivised reviews are not problematic per se. If they reflect the reviewer's genuine experience and it is clear that they are incentivised, they are unlikely to be prohibited. However, where a website or platform does not allow incentivised reviews, it is likely to be misleading to post an incentivised review.

Consumer review information

This means information that is derived from, or is influenced by, consumer reviews. It includes such things as aggregated data like overall ratings, review counts and rankings derived from consumer reviews.

Who is caught by the provisions?

The provisions apply to anyone who engages in the commercial practice of submitting, commissioning or publishing banned reviews, as well as to those who facilitate the foregoing. They will therefore capture a very broad range of businesses.

Those who submit or commission will include professional reviewers, journalists, influencers, content creators, and marketing companies. Those who publish will include e-commerce websites, online marketplaces, social media sites, specialist review sites, trader recommendation platforms, booking agents, and search engines.

What do they need to do?

• Those who use any type of consumer review will need to carefully read Annex B of the CMA's draft guidance (expected to be made final by 6 April 2025 with minimal changes) and assess their policies and procedures. 

• Many businesses will need to at least tweak their current practices eg to ensure that they don’t cherry pick the most positive reviews (see eg the recent ASA Winedrop ruling). Influencers will need to consider whether giving 'always positive' reviews where they are incentivised is now lawful. Others will need to implement more wide ranging changes, potentially to software and systems (implementing a compliance by design approach). Audits of existing consumer reviews and review information might be required, alongside staff training.

• Publishers of consumer reviews will (as a minimum) need to have a written policy in place, conduct regular risk assessments and take other appropriate steps (as informed by the risk assessment). What those other steps might include and who should be taking them is covered in more detail in Annex B to the draft guidance. 

• Affected businesses should also consider the extensive undertakings the CMA has recently secured from Google to tackle fake and misleading consumer reviews, including to ban individuals who repeatedly post such reviews and to use prominent "warning" alerts against businesses with suspicious review activity. These are a useful adjunct to the draft guidance.

When do they need to do it?

The new rules apply from 6 April 2025. However, the CMA has recognised that businesses will need time for the new rules to bed in and has said that, for the first three months of the new regime, it will focus on supporting businesses with their compliance efforts rather than enforcement. It has also said that early enforcement action will focus on the most egregious breaches.