You're surprised a company making a product wants consumers to buy their product?
How does the "slowing down" story keep coming up when it's clear it was the best solution to the problem "what to do when users have the same battery for 3+ years and the device literally cannot sustain itself anymore".
Well, the way I see it is that in the counterfactual world where they didn't downclock, someone who doesn't "trust in Apple's PR" would conclude that the lack of downclocking is so that phones would turn off randomly, nudging people to buy a new phone.
My point is that people without iOS 14.5 (older iPhones), iphone 11 or later will either be forced to upgrade or switch from Android (bad app reviews) to avoid being tracked - a dirty trick by Apple to gain customers.
Some people might brush notifications - either be 3 days as the reporter suggested (self tag) or right away as OP (stranger's tag)
Just a hypothesis, but Apple has a history of doing this as seen in 1,2,3 above. Its PR is genius, always spinning the narrative.
Behind its "privacy" PR, Apple is secretly nudging people to buy more iPhones again...
Past tricks to make people upgrade:
1. Slowing down: https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-51413724
2. "Other" storage: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/666721