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Journals are increasingly requesting that authors provide mandatory data availability statements. It doesn't necessarily mean that the data should be open, just that the authors have to declare if it is or not. Trouble is it's very difficult to prove a statement like "We intend to release our code and data as open source at <repository>", unless you hard-enforce that things are provided at publication time (and then you're assuming the reviewers will actually check, compile, etc.)

Many researchers are just cranking out papers to meet some metric, and a Data Availability Statement (DAS) is just a bit of boilerplate to make your paper seem more plausible.

I think this paper shows that it is just more research theater, meant to distract.

Some journals make these statements mandatory; for others, not promising to share your data can be a significant obstacle to publication (e.g. reviewers may ask why the data is not being made available).

There's an overused term, but in this case it could quite literally be classed as virtue-signalling?