The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act – Fake reviews

The Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA) introduces new rules banning fake reviews. These rules came into force on 6 April 2025 and, after allowing a 3 month period for businesses to adapt to the new regime, the Competition and Markets Authority (the CMA) is now prioritising monitoring and promoting compliance with the new rules.

What are the new rules?

Banned Reviews:

Businesses are not allowed to submit or solicit banned reviews. This includes giving incentives in exchange for positive reviews or publishing consumer reviews in a misleading way. Businesses publishing reviews must take steps to prevent the publication of fake reviews and reviews where incentives are hidden.

For the purposes of the DMCCA a consumer review is a review of a product, a trader or any other matter relevant to transactional decisions – in other words any review that may influence the decision to be made by a consumer.

A fake review is a consumer review that purports to be, but is not, based on a person’s genuine experience. Fake reviews can be either positive or negative and can be designed to boost sales, rankings or ratings or can be aimed at undermining a product or trader.

Reviews can be written, oral, a graphic representation (such as a star rating or thumb up or down) or analogue content such as a marketing letter.

Concealed incentivised reviews:

If a review conceals the fact that a person has been commissioned to provide the review then this is a banned review.

Commissioning can take many forms – it includes any review where the person providing the review has been given any form of payment whether money, commission, discounts, fee products or services, invitations to events or the supply of goods or services on beneficial terms. There is specific guidance from the CMA in relation to content creators, brands and social media platforms.

Incentivised reviews are still allowed but it must be clear to the public that the person providing the review has been incentivised to give that review. The CMA guidance states that usually incentivised reviews will be labelled as such and that the label should not be ambiguous or placed where is might not be seen.

Suppressing reviews:

It is also an offence if a trader suppresses genuine negative or positive reviews, selectively promotes positive or negative reviews or omits information about how reviews have been written (e.g. not telling consumers that a review was incentivised).

Whilst traders can suppress fake negative reviews they should not interfere with the right to leave genuine  negative reviews. Cherry picking by publishing positive reviews over negative reviews so that the impression given to a consumer reading reviews does not reflect the experience reported by all reviewers is also not allowed.

What are the possible penalties?

Infringement of the new rules is automatically unfair and illegal. The CMA has extensive powers to punish non-compliance including the power to fine up to 10% of annual global turnover.

So what should any business promoting odds to consumers be doing?

• Remove reviews which are no longer relevant to products or services currently being provided – these may be misleading unless they have no impact on current consumer decision making
• Take reasonable and proportionate steps to prevent and remove from publication any banned reviews and false or misleading consumer review information
• Have a clear policy on the management of reviews which includes controls on who can submit reviews, systems to identify suspicious patterns and unlawful content, the removal of content which infringes the rules and the business’ approach to incentivised reviews. The policy should be made accessible.
• Make it clear to consumers how they can submit reviews but make it clear that there is a difference between a genuine review and a complaint. Not all negative reviews are complaints.

Business need to review their current practice in relation to reviews and to put in place policies and internal processes for the management of reviews.

If you need help in relation to compliance with this new law then get in touch and ask to speak to  a member of the commercial team.