Is review removal legal?

Yes. Every major review platform asks businesses to report content that breaks its rules, and the platform decides what comes down. Google’s Reviews Management Tool lets an owner report a review, and Google says flagged reviews that violate its content policies are removed. Trustpilot’s guidelines for businesses let a business flag a review for reasons such as harmful or illegal content, personal information, or a review not based on a genuine experience. Yelp removed over 193,700 reviews its community reported in 2025 (Yelp 2025 Trust and Safety Report).

In the US, the law on this is the FTC’s Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 CFR Part 465, in force since 21 October 2024. Section 465.7, Review suppression, bans anyone from using a groundless legal threat, a physical threat, intimidation or a knowingly false public accusation to stop a review being written or to get one removed. The rule does not ban reporting a review to the platform that hosts it.

The same section lists content a business may withhold from reviews on its own website, if it applies the criteria to every review whatever the rating: trade secrets, defamatory or harassing content, another person’s personal information, discriminatory content, clearly false content, reviews it reasonably believes are fake, and reviews unrelated to its products. The rule also bans fake reviews (465.2), undisclosed insider reviews (465.5) and company-controlled review sites (465.6). On 22 December 2025 the FTC sent its first warning letters under the rule to 10 companies, and said each violation can cost up to $53,088.

Platforms punish the wrong tactics too. Trustpilot says misuse of its flagging tool can lead to account suspension or a Consumer Warning on the business’s profile. Yelp placed six Questionable Legal Threat alerts in 2025, and five came from legal action or threats a business made to suppress reviews.

We file each review or post you choose with the platform, under that platform’s own policy, and the platform decides. A review that does not break the policy usually stays up. We do not contact reviewers, ask a platform who a reviewer is, buy or post reviews, or use fake accounts or mass flagging. For Google’s policy and report process, read is it legal to remove Google reviews. For why we never contact the reviewer, read will you contact the reviewer.