The story, which I had seen, is essntially true - ish. There are huge exaggerations and absolute errors.
What they are describing is a pre-packaged highly industrialised semi-instant version of the real thing (which takes at least 16 hours to make properly). The bagged stuff versions are made in Liuzhou, but few are eaten here. They are vastly inferior to the real thing and cost more! I can go out and grab a bowl very easily anywhere in the city for a lot less.
The 'funky' smell is greatly exaggerated. It is just salt fermented bamboo. You can walk past a store and if you didn't look, you would never know what they were selling.
The idea that they were invented independently by thousands of laid-off factory workers is a fantasy. The local government, after various failed attempts to establish a trendy industry and boost tourism, finally hit on the idea of marketing luosifen. First, they decided that we needed more luosifen restaurants, so they spent millions on tax breaks and rent holidays etc to encourage more people to open shops.
People just carried on going to their old favourites and within months, most of the new places closed. Back to the drawing board. Next, they came up with the idea of an instant noodle. Money was poured into research and in the end they managed to produce something not-quite-instant that vaguely resembled luosifen. They didn't really take off.
Then in 2020, they slowly began to creep up the ranking tables to become the top online food purchase in China. More factories opened, some better than others. Some don't even use the essential snails. They are vile.
In 2021, the Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Liuzhou and "inspected" one of the larger factories, giving an official seal of approval. It was not reported whether or not he ate the dish.