The FTC's 2024 rule on fake and incentivized reviews made several practices civilly enforceable with per-violation penalties. For sellers collecting reviews with rewards, three things matter:
1. Never condition a reward on sentiment
Paying for a review "expressing a particular sentiment" — positive or negative — is prohibited outright. A reward for honest feedback, given regardless of what the customer writes, is not.
2. Material connections must be disclosed
If a reviewer received something of value, that connection can't be hidden. Marketplace rules (like Amazon's) go further and ban incentivized product reviews entirely — which is why ReviewBuddie's marketplace funnels reward claim completion, not the review.
3. No suppression
Using processes that prevent or discourage negative reviews from being submitted or displayed counts as review suppression — the same conduct marketplaces call gating.