It's somewhat less nefarious than that. Before we announced the availability of a new Mainboard that existing Framework Laptop users can upgrade to, we wanted

It's somewhat less nefarious than that. Before we announced the availability of a new Mainboard that existing Framework Laptop users can upgrade to, we wanted to make sure that there were interesting ways for people to re-use their old ones. When we sent out hardware to some creators, we told them we would appreciate it if they posted their projects by X date, leading to them clustering just before that date.