It makes sense that people are upset that this data is collected and released in this manner - yes it is public but serving it via the API (Not allowing a user

It makes sense that people are upset that this data is collected and released in this manner - yes it is public but serving it via the API (Not allowing a user to scrape) lets its access remain under the control of the service(and user, to some extent). It seems, though, that this discussion is overlooking the fact that there are companies out there which are gathering this exact same data(And then some) to sell to other organizations who want to identify their users.