Honestly I’m not sure.

I played their first game Ingress back in the day and I remember at the time knowing that this is what they were doing with that data.

I don’t remember reading it in the TOS but just looking into Niantic made it pretty obvious.

When Pokémon go pushed for that AR feature it seemed clear what their goal was with it.

I’m not defending them. Obviously people feel misled so it wasn’t made clear enough.

Also not saying people who didn’t know this were ignorant or anything. It’s just that I don’t think it was really a secret.

Wait til everyone finds out about what they are doing with the Pokémon Sleep game data.