Tired of fake reviews? Facebook sets strict new policies against them

Facebook is coming down hard on fake user reviews on business pages. To tackle this widespread problem, the company has revised its Community Feedback guidelines.

While Facebook has already taken steps to address potentially abusive reviews, the policy change codifies these guidelines. People who leave fake bad reviews in order to get refunds or other freebies from a business that wants to please its consumers are protected by Facebook's new guidelines, which are also supposed to address incentivized reviews. This addresses the issue of businesses paying unsuspecting customers to leave overly favorable reviews on their pages.

Other reviews that may be removed include those that have nothing to do with the business they claim to be about, contain graphic or unsuitable content, or are simply clickbaity. If a customer or business breaks these guidelines, Facebook claims it will remove the questionable review, deny business owners access to the various tags and listings, and suspend or prohibit "access to all and any Meta products or features." Repeat offenders' Facebook accounts may be suspended or banned.

Last year, the social media giant removed 16,000 fake review groups, but an investigation by consumer rights group Which? found that many more are still active.