That article is bunk. Louis Rossmann and others in the right to repair community have praised Apple for providing these repair kits. They let you do factory-quality repairs.

What the author of that article doesn’t realize is that all of Apple’s modern phones are waterproof. To achieve that factory seal against liquid ingress requires fancy adhesives. You can’t open these things with a jeweller’s screwdriver. It takes highly specialized equipment to open the device and then reseal it when you’re done replacing the battery.