It is lying, alright.
That said, I don't think that this lying notification is the best example of Android designers being nefarious jerks. The notification lies to user about non-existing "battery drain", but it only does so when developer tries to get around the requirement to show notification with foreground Service. It is shown when you set notification to be hidden via low-priority. I have also seen it when notification icon was fully transparent. It is basically a retaliation against developer misconduct (when developer tries to run persistent background process without telling user). Ideally, this should encourage developers to show a proper foreground Service notification, which the user may consequently hide via notification settings.
(Btw, the on-device battery meter is horribly inaccurate and always has been. Multiple values, like screen power use, are hardcoded by OEM and tracking app power use is not reliable in any case because those graphs are incapable of measuring cascading power efficienty effects coming from using the radio or Play Services.
Use Battery Historian if you want more useful battery use debugging.)