I think the joke was that it's kind of the same with Pokemon GO. You play the game mainly because it's fun or lets you get some exercise in, so it's not really a bad thing that the company used the data to train a useful model. You're still having fun or doing exercise regardless of what they do with the data. Essentially, it's a positive externality: https://www.economicshelp.org/micro-economic-essays/marketfa...

But I think your point, if I understand it correctly, is that the in-game rewards kind of "hacked your brain" to do it, which is the part you're objecting to?