CMA puts fake reviews and endorsements in UK under spotlight

New prohibitions relating to fake reviews, concealed incentivised reviews and false or misleading consumer review information under the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Act 2024 (DMCCA) came into effect on 6 April 2025. At the same time, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) published standalone guidance on this new banned practice and gave businesses a three-month grace period to consider the guidance and make any necessary changes.

With the grace period ending in July 2025, the CMA conducted an online sweep of review platforms to assess compliance. It has now also published a new guide for online review sites and updated its short guides for content creators and influencers, brands and agencies and platforms to reflect the new DMCCA requirements on reviews and social media endorsements.

DMCCA requirements

Any business that publishes consumer reviews, whether online or offline (such as in marketing letters), now has to take such "reasonable and proportionate steps" as are necessary to prevent and remove from publication fake reviews, concealed incentivised reviews and false or misleading consumer review information (such as star ratings).

The new prohibitions target the submission, commission and publication of such content. This covers a broad range of material, from straightforward product reviews given by consumers, to influencer endorsements (which effectively amounts to advertising), reviews given in exchange for "freebies", and "likes" or "thumbs up" given in respect of other review content.

The CMA's fake reviews guidance also requires all publishers to have a clear policy prohibiting fake reviews and setting out the trader's approach to incentivised reviews and consumer review information.

CMA sweep

Since April, the CMA has completed a review of the websites of more than 100 businesses, focusing on their policies on fake reviews. It found that over half of the businesses reviewed could be failing to comply with the guidance.

The CMA identified three main areas of concern:

• Policies were either non-existent or hard to find.
• There was a lack of any clear prohibition in relation to fake reviews in the policy documents reviewed. Businesses appeared to rely on a general statement that "user content must comply with all applicable laws", which the CMA has said is unlikely to meet requirements. Instead, the regulator has said that clear wording providing, for example, that "reviews must be genuine and not false or misleading" is more along the lines of what is required.
• A lack of any policy at all on incentivised reviews.

The CMA recognises that there is no "one size fits all" approach. Instead, each business has to assess the risk of banned review content appearing on its website or in its hard-copy marketing literature and identify appropriate measures to address those risks effectively.

The regulator has also stressed that, while publishers may use third parties to manage reviews on their website – for example, where a third party collects, publishes or moderates reviews for a retailer – the duty to take steps to prevent and remove banned review content cannot be delegated.

Now that the three-month grace period is over, the CMA has made clear that it is prepared to take fast action to enforce the new fake review rules. It has written to those websites it considers to be non-compliant, requesting that they put the appropriate measures in place. It has also said that it will work with businesses to encourage compliance. Part of this work includes producing guidance to assist traders.   

Guidance for social media platforms

The updated version of the CMA's guidance on reviews and endorsements for social media platforms now reflects the DMCCA and the CMA's fake reviews guidance. It also sets out extra steps that should be taken by social media platforms specifically in addition to those relating to its policy documents:

• Labelling advertising: provide content creators with tools to easily and effectively label content as advertising when required, including the use of algorithms to automatically prompt content creators to label their advertising content correctly.
• Preventing hidden advertising and fake reviews: assess the risk of hidden ads and fake reviews appearing on the platform. Platforms should take into account their business models, where content comes from, the functionality offered, the type of content shown to consumers and its potential impact. As well as using automated tools to detect unlabelled incentivised endorsements, platforms should also carry out manual checks to ensure that their systems and processes are working. In addition, platforms should remove non-compliant content and hold content creators to account if it continues to appear.
• User reporting: make it simple for users to report suspected banned review content.
• Facilitate compliance by brands: take proactive steps to raise awareness among brands of the platform's terms of service, policies and any other information on incentivised endorsements and fake reviews. Platforms should also encourage brands to ensure that content which endorses them is properly labelled as advertising and is genuine.
• Enforcement: apply proportionate sanctions when violations occur, which may include removing the content, blocking content creators for a certain period, placing warnings on their pages, and suspending or closing their accounts. The CMA also advises undertaking regular assessments of the effectiveness of the sanctions regime and keeping records of the steps taken to deal with banned content, as well as notifying the CMA of systematic infringements by content creators.  

Businesses, brands and agencies

In its updated guide on reviews for businesses and agencies, the CMA advises that businesses whose products are being reviewed must:

• Not pretend to be a customer and write reviews about their own products or other businesses' products and not commission third parties to write fake reviews.
• Not offer inducements (money or gifts) to customers to write positive reviews about their business.
• When working with third parties, make sure that they are also compliant.

The CMA reminds brands in its guidance on social media endorsements that they should ensure that all incentivised endorsements are clearly labelled as advertising.

Brands are responsible for labelling, whether they offer content creators payment, gifts or any other incentive, either formally or informally. Even if the business does not control the content or ask content creators for anything in return for the incentive, it must still ensure that all ads are labelled as advertising. Brands should also be proactive if they detect unlabelled posts about them and work with the content creator to correct the content.

Online review sites

In its new short guide for online review sites, the regulator advises that all reviews must:

• Be genuine and reflect consumers' experiences.
• Be relevant to the product they describe and not outdated.
• When presented as aggregate ratings, not be distorted by fake or incentivised reviews.
• Once submitted, be published in a timely way.

Users must be informed of the difference between leaving a review and making a complaint to the platform. Additionally, review sites must not treat a negative review intended for publication as a complaint or try to persuade customers to submit a complaint, rather than a review, or dissuade them from leaving a review even if their initial problem has been resolved.

Content creators

The CMA's updated guidance for online content creators reminds bloggers, influencers, online streamers, celebrities and social media personalities of the labelling requirements when posting content for which they have been incentivised.

Their content must also be based on their genuine experience. Incentivisation includes being sent "freebies" or "gifts" without being asked for anything in return, and posting content about their own business. All promotional content, whether it be photos, videos, podcasts or other online content, must be properly labelled as advertising, and this must be obvious as soon as anyone engages with the content.

Osborne Clarke comment

Traders that allow the publication of reviews and endorsements on their website or platform or that use reviews in their hard-copy marketing literature should review the CMA's main fake reviews guidance and any short guides relevant to them.

When it comes to hidden advertising, influencer content and social media endorsements, businesses need to be compliant with both the fake reviews laws under the DMCCA and the advertising rules. Where there is non-compliance, businesses could face action from both the CMA under the DMCCA and from the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) under the advertising codes of practice.

Given that the CMA now has powers to enforce directly and impose significant fines, compliance is of paramount importance, particularly since the three month "grace period" has now passed and the CMA has indicated that it expects to focus its early action on the new banned practice relating to fake reviews. The ASA also has online endorsements firmly on its radar and is naming and shaming influencers who are routinely in breach of the labelling rules in the code on its website, actively monitoring endorsements using its AI-driven active ad monitoring system, and enforcing where complaints are made.