For the same reason that European rules would plant potatoes in a "guarded garden for the king" so neighbors would want them too: ;-)
There's no better way than artificial scarcity to ensure accelerated adoption.

Plus, replacing the Home screen and interacting with the system at a lower level than probably e.g. Apple on iOS would allow, given the wide variety of Android versions (and hacks) out there that might be incompatible in unforeseen ways, Zuck probably does not want his company to go down in history as the one that (at least temporarily for Joe Avg. Users) inadvertently bricked a hundred million phones or so.

when he manages to remove every trace of phone-home crap in there, then it's maybe news worth mentioning

Then how would it work?

As a "leech-only client to Facebook" for the few who do actually care about their own privacy, but are nosy enough to want to read up on everybody else's every move (from the phones of all those to whom it couldn't matter less as they use an unpatched very verbose version).

...would rather have it as an exposé (pour les initiés) after meaningful peer review. ;-)

...when every minor misdemeanor or even purely civil matter becomes a federal felony.
The legal response to progress must not be "harsher punishments for every new generation" to consider computers (including cellphones these days) evil because "even" organized crime uses them, and to treat everyone else (who inevitably has to use them as part of one's daily life as well) like a mobster too - until the whole world becomes a "prison planet". Good to see a DA (possibly unintentionally) acknowledge the real issue in the midst of fearmongering.
Cf. http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/02/aarons-law-amending-the-cfaa/

http://www.mike2.com/2012/08/11/mars-rover/

is the order of the day. Food has to be ordered online. Kitchenware is not at home anymore, but in an Italian, Chinese or other canteen kitchen cloud," the Estate Agent says: http://www.heise.de/ct/schlagseite/2010/11/gross.jpg

If Zuck doesn't know enough about most of his users to get debts collected, then on this Earth who does?

A strange bot-herder it would be not to teach his one-click ponies how to hit "Oh, yes, PLEASE pester all my friends!" a millisecond after it pops up...
On someone else's machine, at the drone's users' expense.

users who like to send spam [...] typically aren't willing to pay for the privilege. Impose a fee – however small – and they probably won't bother.

But for different reasons: The spammers will find ways to avoid being billed themselves - having a habit of abusing the resources of others, they already are in people's PCs with their botnets, for crying out loud...

...may conceivably spell doom for some of the innocent (but possibly identifiable) "third parties" implicated by remote control without their consent or knowledge.

Shouldn't our taxes at least buy us the due diligence of authorities to consider the most obvious and grave dangers before trying to get such plans implemented?

1. Advertise top speeds and possibly (formerly?) even unlimited bandwidth
2. Slap a presumption of guilt on those who actually use what they paid for
3. Demand a ransom from anyone who cares to clear their names lest they be ratted out to the MAFIAA (and lose the access promised for their fees)
4. Profit?! (At least because networks will never need to be built out again, at forced ever-declining usage...)
Different in which way exactly from a racket scheme?

flashlights ... and the LEDs that may be used in them, it's crazy what details they keep tabs on

They have to, since these things are typically ordered from overseas, with prohibitive return postage fees, and many times some manufacturer or vendor will try to become the cheapest by changing to LEDs of a crappy (i.e. fake) rather than Cree variety. When the item arrives, one usually has just a few days to ascertain whether it is genuine or if a refund needs to be requested from the payment service.

Put your accepted kernel contribution on your CV and your CV will command a higher salary.

When every search engine on Earth returns allegations of incompetence by some Überhacker Himself as the first few hundred hits on your name, you can save the time for writing that CV in the first place as HR would often just send it to /dev/null (if they thought in these terms ;-)) unseen anyway.

This boils down to these three points:
1) To put it somewhat bluntly,

...to RMS, these absolutely had to be points 0 thru 2? ;-)

then FLOSS forks Ubun-too, then GNU wins.

(With a nod to Ghandi...)