I played pokemon go seriously for a few years (both at the beginning and recently) and honestly spoofers are an issue only because imho Niantic is incompetent and doesn't care.[1]
not to say how it you are anywhere not in a medium size city you need either spoofers or endless grind to unlock significant parts of the game
[1] to be fair I left before the pandemic, so I cannot comment on how they handled that
If you can just spoof, the whole nature of augmented reality falls apart and someone could simply spoof themselves anywhere and take those positions. It was a big problem before the android os made it harder to spoof.
There's no point/ fun in playing augmented reality games if enough people simply cheat and the real world limitations aren't a factor.