Businesses that use and publish endorsements, reviews, or testimonials should be aware of the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) updated Endorsement Guides and proposed new rule banning fake reviews and testimonials. Here’s what you need to know.

Updated Endorsement Guides

On June 29, the FTC announced its updated Endorsement Guides, which apprise businesses of unfair or deceptive practices that violate the Federal Trade Commission Act.

Through the updated Endorsement Guides, the FTC:

• Revises the definition of “endorsements” to mean any advertising, marketing, or promotional message for a product that consumers are likely to believe reflects the opinions, beliefs, findings, or experiences of a party other than the sponsoring advertiser, even if the views expressed by that party are identical to those of the sponsoring advertiser.
• Explains that in procuring, suppressing, boosting, organizing, publishing, upvoting, downvoting, or editing consumer reviews, advertisers should not take actions to distort or otherwise mispresent what the consumers think of a product.
• Addresses incentivized reviews, stating that reviews that fail to clearly and conspicuously disclose incentives provided to reviewers are likely deceptive.
• Explains the definition of “clear and conspicuous” disclosures to mean the disclosures are easily noticeable and easily understood by ordinary consumers.

The updated guides further outline potential liability for advertisers, endorsers, and intermediaries....

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