What is the FTC review rule?

What the FTC review rule covers

Before this rule, fake reviews were attacked as ordinary deception under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which meant the Commission generally had to win a case before it could seek money. A trade regulation rule changes that arithmetic: once conduct is defined as a violation of the rule itself, civil penalties become available directly. That is the practical significance of 16 CFR Part 465, and it is why the rule got the attention it did. The Commission's own announcement of the final rule banning fake reviews sets out the reasoning.

The rule is short and it is organised by conduct. Each section describes a practice and declares it an unfair or deceptive act or practice and a violation of the part.

Section	What it prohibits
465.2	Writing, creating, selling, buying or disseminating a review or testimonial that materially misrepresents that the reviewer exists, that they used the product, or what their experience was
465.4	Providing compensation or incentives in exchange for, or conditioned on, a review expressing a particular sentiment, positive or negative
465.5	Reviews and testimonials from officers, managers, employees or agents without a clear and conspicuous disclosure of the relationship
465.6	Misrepresenting that a review site or entity the business controls provides independent opinions
465.7	Using groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation or knowingly false public accusations to suppress a review; and misrepresenting that a displayed review set is complete when negative reviews are being withheld
465.8	Selling, distributing or buying fake indicators of social media influence such as bot followers or fabricated view counts

Section 465.3 is reserved, and 465.9 is a severability clause. There is no 465.3 prohibition to look for.

Who the rule binds, and what counts as insider reviews

Most of the rule binds a business, which 465.1 defines as an individual, partnership, corporation or other commercial entity that sells products or services. Two provisions are drafted more broadly. Section 465.7(a), on suppressing a review through unfounded legal threats or intimidation, applies to anyone. Section 465.8, on fake indicators of social media influence, also applies to anyone, and reaches sellers, distributors and purchasers.

Paid testimonials, and where incentives sit

Section 465.4 is narrower than most summaries suggest, and the narrowness matters. What it prohibits is compensation or an incentive given in exchange for, or conditioned on, a review that expresses a particular sentiment. Paying for five stars is squarely inside it. Paying for negative reviews of a competitor is equally inside it, which is the part people forget.

Offering an incentive for an honest review of any sentiment is a different question under this section, but it does not escape the law. The material connection between the business and the reviewer still has to be disclosed under the Commission's endorsement guidance, and if the resulting review misstates the reviewer's experience, 465.2 is in play. The rule also carves out two things explicitly: generalised solicitations asking actual purchasers to leave a review, and simply hosting consumer reviews. Asking every customer, without steering the outcome, is the lawful path.

Review suppression, including the legal-threat route

Section 465.7 has two halves that people conflate. The first reaches conduct aimed at getting a review taken down or never written, using an unfounded legal threat, a physical threat, intimidation, or a public accusation known to be false. This is the provision that makes a bluffing cease and desist letter over a genuine review a violation in its own right.

The second half reaches display. If a business runs a review section on its own site and presents it as showing most or all the reviews submitted, it cannot quietly withhold the negative ones. The rule lists neutral criteria that are fine when applied equally to every review regardless of sentiment, including trade secrets, defamatory or abusive content, another person's personal information, discriminatory content, clearly false content, reviews the seller reasonably believes are fake, and reviews unrelated to what is sold. Filtering by rating is not on that list, and that practice has its own name, covered on our page about review gating.

Civil penalties, and what is still unsettled

Because this is a rule violation rather than a case to be proven from scratch, the FTC can seek civil penalties under Section 5(m)(1)(A) of the FTC Act. That maximum is adjusted for inflation and stood at $53,088 per violation following the Commission's 2025 adjustment, with no further adjustment made for 2026. What counts as one violation in a case involving many reviews is not something the courts have settled under this rule, so any figure you see multiplied out is an estimate rather than a holding.

Enforcement under Part 465 is young. The Commission's own newsroom is the reliable record of what has actually been brought, and the FTC also publishes a plain-language question and answer guide to the rule aimed at businesses trying to comply.

Fake reviews the rule does not reach

It does not give you a way to remove a review. It is enforced by the Commission and, for some parallel state statutes, by state attorneys general. A consumer or a business cannot sue under it directly. If a fake review is sitting on your listing right now, the faster instrument is the platform's own policy, which runs on separate grounds and separate timelines: Google, for one, publishes its prohibited and restricted content policies for reviews, and a report under those policies costs nothing.

The rule also does not touch truthful negative reviews. Nothing in Part 465 makes an honest bad review removable, and a provider who implies otherwise is describing something the law does not offer. Sorting a policy-violating review from a merely unwelcome one is the first thing a reputation audit settles.

This page is not legal advice. The primary source is 16 CFR Part 465 and the Commission's own guidance linked above, and both are worth reading before you change how you collect reviews.