I don't think there's any hoax being played here, and I don't think they're fraudsters. I suspect someone simply discovered the various advanced settings of x264 and found out that they can maintain good video quality at "lower-than-common" bitrates, mistaking it all for a flash of brilliance on their own part. Everyone knows that f.e. YouTube aren't really doing everything they can with whatever h.264 encoder they've been using.