Chinese travel platform Mafengwo, known mainly for its millennial user base of independent travellers, has denied that it uses fake reviews on its site after a social media report accused it of copying review content from competitors and fabricating as much as 85% of reviews on its platform.

In a statement published on its corporate Weibo account on Monday, the company said that reviews of restaurants and eateries made up less than 3% of the user-generated content in the Mafengwo ecosystem, which includes travel itineraries, diary entries and photo-sharing.

“Taking into account our total number of users, the number of accounts posting fake reviews is minuscule and Mafengwo has since removed such accounts,” Mafengwo said in the statement. “The number of [fake] users described in the media report has large discrepancies compared to reality and third-party statistics.”

Mafengwo sought to distance itself from merchants who may have engaged in faking reviews, stating that the company removes 26,000 posts each week for violating its terms and conditions, and has to date closed down 15,000 accounts.