Up until now, Amazon has turned a blind eye to reviews that were done in exchange for free products, also known as “incentivized reviews,” on their website. This is no longer the case as the online marketplace has begun clamping done on this practice.
While Amazon has neveer tolerate paid reviews, the company did allow incentivized reviews provided that the reviewers added a disclaimer saying so. Today, Amazon has published a blog post mentioning that it has updated its terms of service, causing incentivized reviews to no longer be allowed on the website. While you can no longer post incentivized reviews on the Amazon marketplace proper, Amazon will still allow users to do so via the Amazon Vine program, albeit with limitations.
As for incentivized reviews that were pubilshed prior to the terms of service changes, Amazon has told TechCrunch that they will only be pulling reviews that are deemed “excessive” while the more measured reviews will remain visible on the item pages.
Source: TechCrunch, Amazon