The Verge is pretty well-known for their ethics policy [1] (they won't take money from any company they talk about) and that actually enables them to highlight interesting stuff like this that companies would never bother to pay to promote.

This article is actually the first time I've heard of this feature and I follow Apple news a lot, so I appreciate it.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/ethics-statement

No, it's an older feature. How it works is not super intuitive so it's good to have reports on how it helped someone.

Also known as word of mouth.