1. Do increasingly heavy OS releases slow older machines (yes. Though ios12 has reversed this trend.)
2. Does iOS deliberately throttle older machines.
The latter is the particular issue. It relates to 2 or 3 iPhone models with only when they have dodgy batteries, so I don’t think the accusation of generally nerfing old phones really holds.
I do agree, however that Apple absolutely should have made it clear what was happening. Very poor communication, but not, I think malicious
