At an individual level that may be so, but if they're doing it en-masse then they essentially had secret/sensitive competitor information when they made an offe

At an individual level that may be so, but if they're doing it en-masse then they essentially had secret/sensitive competitor information when they made an offer to buy WA, daily active users, usage-by-demographic etc. On top of that they would have had access to message formats, headers, encryption protocols and so on, things that are potentially trade secrets. This isn't user-visible data and app owners shouldn't expect that competitors can access it directly from a user's phone.