The danger with that approach is that Linux is not a mainstream product. It's come on leaps and bounds, and Ubuntu has been hugely responsible for the broadening of desktop linux's appeal, but it's still not mainstream. Windows is mainstream. OSX, some people have heard of, even fewer have tried. Linux is still very much the domain of us geeks, a group that a) is very willing to switch based on principle b) is very capable of switching c) understands how our privacy is being violated.
Canonical COULD get desktop Linux into the mainstream, and stand a better chance than anyone else of doing so, but this is a massive shot in the foot. I give Ubuntu about 6 months of sticking with this policy before they realise they're slowly, irretrievably losing most of their customers.
They've been at it for a lot longer than 6 months. The shopping lens was introduced a year ago. There was also the Unity controversy before that. Debian has never particularly liked them for various reasons.
I'd argue that if they are not going for the mainstream consumers (or enterprise), they might as well just close the company. For the reasons you mentioned, Linux users are quite high-maintenance and difficult to please. Evidence of this is how much Linux users tend to flame each other. I don't think Canonical really wants those extremely principled, very privacy-sensitive Linux geeks as customers. They would be behaving very differently to the criticism if they did.
Canonical COULD get desktop Linux into the mainstream, and stand a better chance than anyone else of doing so, but this is a massive shot in the foot. I give Ubuntu about 6 months of sticking with this policy before they realise they're slowly, irretrievably losing most of their customers.