The reddit user literally just completely made up the “to circumvent local government restriction” bit (and gets sent to the front page of r/all).
Whenever I see a post like this, I wonder if it was done by an individual or as part of a paid propaganda effort.
Link because I’m not a lib
Archive link in case it gets deleted
The sources literally linked by the OP:
Business Insider
The Guardian
Hexbear has a fakenews comm specifically to identify this issue. The whole point is to post a fake story and wait for people to comment on it. The link is usually just like a rickroll or a fake news site like that says like abc.net/lmaogettem or whatever.
I hate it, but it’s fantastic at weeding out people who don’t even follow the link.