IssueTracker

Tested on PP2.180412.013 , Pixel 2

When it's "minimized", I also can't even reach the app info from the notification.

We have passed this to the development team and will update this issue with more information as it becomes available.

You can hide them from Settings, but we think it's important that users know when apps are running in the background, so the fast controls only offer 'minimize'".

The user already knows the app is running. And when he chooses to hide it, it's because he finds it not needed to tell him that it's running.
That's the purpose of hiding.
The minimize barely does anything. The notification stays as it is, and only the icon gets hidden.
Choosing to minimize frustrates me as a user. It doesn't minimize it at all. It's still shown exactly how it was shown before.
Going to the settings is even more frustrating. It was much easier before to hide notifications. Why would I want to perform more steps for this?

please re-consider this. Maybe measure the amount of people get frustrated by "minimize" ? Maybe by checking how many of them try to do more operations about the notification after choosing "minimize" ?
You can also measure the amount of people stopping to use "keep showing" after they understand what it does.

@6
This problem orginated from apps(unfortunately many from my country) exploiting foreground service restrictions(that a persistent notification muste be displayed) to abuse background activities backed to Android lollipop or earlier.
And it ends up like this.

@7 There is already this restriction, which forces them to put the notification.
But now that the user is well aware of the app, that it's "running", he should be given an easy choice of telling the OS : " Ok I got it, it's running, now please hide this notification".