It's partially accurate, but it's mostly misinterpreted.
"No better than placebo" sounds like the drugs don't work at all, but that's not true. Placebo is unreasonably effective at treating depression, and strangely enough placebo is getting more effective over time: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/straight-talk/201803...
Take a look at the response chart for placebo vs. SSRI some time and it will become very clear. Placebo treatment is literally so effective that it's difficult for actual antidepressants to significantly separate from placebo. That doesn't mean they work, though.
So why don't we just give everyone placebo? Ignoring the moral issues, active treatments are still superior to placebo and the results tend to last much longer than placebo. And for the most severely depressed patients, active treatments perform much better than placebo.
The placebo effect cuts both ways. If someone goes into an SSRI trial convinced that SSRIs are a garbage conspiracy pushed by Big Pharma after reading anti-psychiatry posts on the internet, they are much less likely to see depression remission.