It'd also be nice if they returned (-inf, -inf) or something so people know it's not a "real" location, lest folks start looking for the house closest to the lake.
If the uncertainty can vary, you have to explicitly indicate it. If returning an irregularly shaped region is too hard, you can at least return a center and a radius.
...or is that what they were already doing, and the problem comes from people ignoring the radius? In that case, yeah, I guess they were doing what they could, and good on them I guess for moving the center to somewhere that won't cause problems when people ignore the radius. But it doesn't sound like that's what they were doing in the first place?
And according to the Internet Archive, this element existed already in 2015, so they do not seem to have added it in response to this article.
What they did seem to have added in response to this article, however (as it is new), is a more explicit warning for their customers:
"Latitude and Longitude are often near the center of population. These values are not precise and should not be used to identify a particular address or household."
To be honest, I think it is very hard for an API provider to ensure that their customers will use all the right disclaimers when providing their data onwards to their customers... I think the new approach with pointing the general coordinates into uninhabitated spaces and adding that warning seems probably the best they can do without completely changing their API design (which would make many customers very angry, I would guess).
That way, when random strangers show up, they won't cause trouble and could even file a proper report if they wished.
And when actual law enforcement arrives, with battering rams and all, they also won't cause undue stress, given that where they will have arrived is a Police station.
Similarly, if the default location for the state of New York is the Oriskany Falls, NY police station, then how are they going to file a useful police report for something that happened in New York City?
The reasons given by the g'parent, for pointing to a police station, don't look like they would actually work in practice.
(0,0) would only be a useful default if you knew the IP address is located somewhere on planet Earth, but not more than that. And at time of writing, the vast majority (all?) of IP addresses are located on Earth anyway, so it's not especially helpful.
You could read the "country" field that is returned together with the location.
EDIT: added 'for the U.S.'
ADD: Here's a link to help: https://www.google.com/maps/place/38%C2%B053'23.3%22N+77%C2%...