Shay Mitchell Claps Back at Accusations She Faked China Travel Photos
Shay Mitchell, who frequently documents her vacations on social media, responded to accusations on Friday that she had faked some of her travel photos from a recent trip to China.
“View so nice it almost looks… fake,” the former Pretty Little Liars star, 30, wrote alongside an image of herself standing in front of Shanghai’s famous waterside attraction The Bund.
Days earlier, Stylecaster accused Mitchell of taking some of the travel snaps she shared on Instagram from other photographers and Instagram users, without giving them credit.
One of the photos the website pointed out showed two pastel buildings, which Mitchell indicated might “inspire” her “next nail polish change.”
However, after searching for the photograph online, Stylecaster found a very similar-looking shot from a photographer’s Tumblr that was actually taken in Japan.
Commenting on the controversy, one of Mitchell’s fans wrote that “someone with this many followers (And really anyone) needs to give credit where credit is do…it’s not fair to the artists that work hard.”
The website also drew attention to the similarities between a photo the 30-year-old star shared from Shanghai’s Jing’an Temple and another image shared in 2016 by Instagram user @shanghainowandthen.
Both photos appeared to feature the exact same tourists in the background taking out their cameras and walking around the ancient Buddhist temple.
Want to keep up on the latest from PEOPLE? Sign up for our daily newsletter to get our best stories of the day delivered straight to your inbox.Although Mitchell chose not to directly address any specific allegations made against her, she did appear to update a few of her captions to reflect the fact that she re-posted the images from other sources.
While Stylecaster reported the actress initially captioned a photograph of a red door “SHANGHAI” and an image of Chinese city Xi’an’s world-famous Terracotta Warriors as “Terracotta Army: Xi’an,” both photo captions currently acknowledge she did not take the photographs herself.
In the comments section of one of the Instagram photos, a fan claimed that Mitchell had changed the captions, writing: “before she removed a couple of the photos and edited her captions, she did tag the locations and herself like she was actually there.”
RELATED: Shay Mitchell Has a One Major Rule About Posting Food Photos on Instagram
Mitchell previously revealed she gets “a little angry” when people fake food photos they post on Instagram.
“I love a great food shot and I follow a lot of food blogs,” Mitchell told PEOPLE last month. “But if I ever find out that you don’t really eat that food, and you just used it for a photo, that’s when I get a little angry — not only because you’re wasting it, but because someone like me could have enjoyed it.”
She added: “I don’t do a lot of food photos, but if I did, know that I ate it, and it was amazing enough for me to post it. I will never just order food to take a photo and then not eat it.”