Since Anthropic has eroded all the trust it could possibly have, I'm going to allow myself to be cynical and say that this move is just another pillar of their shady marketing practices.

I know a few real persons who will praise Fable solely because it's scarce and unavailable to them. Heck, they've already been doing that in the past month, as if Fable allowed them to do unimaginable things.

And once this play has done its job, Anthropic is going to come as a savior and put it back into subscription, driving even more hysteria and visibility.

There's probably a name for this tactic in some marketing playbook which I'm unaware of.