Can anyone help me understand why this particular issue is any different than Anthropic training its models with its brand of moral judgement since day one? I've always been turned off by their particular stances on things they bake into their models that steer users in directions.

Maybe this is just a different set of people now realizing that Anthropic does this and has always done this?

Do not forget that this company is launching this thing at the moment it's trying to IPO. It's not rocket science that their very public steering/denial claim is really just them hinting to interested investors that their moat is absolute.