(ECNS) - Online travel service platform Mafengwo denied that it had used copied user-generated content on its site after criticism in a social media report went viral.
A report posted on Tencent’s popular app WeChat said that Mafengwo had 7,454 fake user accounts that copied 5.72 million restaurant reviews and 12.21 million hotel reviews from rival platforms including Ctrip, Meituan-Dianping, Agoda and Yelp.
The report, using data from Hurui Data, said Mafengwo fabricated 85 percent of user content on its site by using bots and writers.
In response, the company said reviews made up 2.91 percent of user-generated content in the Mafengwo ecosystem and accounts posting fake reviews have been removed.
The number of fake users described in the social media report is seriously inconsistent with facts and third-party data, according to the company’s statement.
E-commerce experts said some platforms exaggerate numbers to impress investors. But a PR manger at the travel platform TripAdvisor said it’s hard to say if using user content from another platform constitutes copyright infringement because the reviews belong to users, not the platforms.
An online community for Chinese tourists to share travel tips and shop for travel products, Mafengwo has completed several rounds of financing, including $133 million in December 2017 from new investors, among them U.S. private equity fund General Atlantic, travel sector investment firm Ocean Link, Temasek, Yuantai Investment and Hopu Investments.
