build_news() trying cran.rstudio.com despite pkgdown.internet = FALSE

[py-b]

From what I understand build_news() searchs the documentation for a package on the internet for every name surrounded with curly braces on NEWS.md.

Should it be disabled if the option pkgdown.internet is set to FALSE?

The following code :

options(pkgdown.internet = FALSE)
pkgdown::build_site()

leadd to this message (I ran this code in an environment with no access to internet) :

-- Building news ---------------------------------------------------------------
---
Standard error:
Warning message:
In url(sprintf("%s/%s", cran, path), open = "rb") :
  URL 'https://cran.rstudio.com/web/packages/packages.rds': status was 'HTTP response code said error'

Removing the curly braces in NEWS.md makes this error disappear.