> 'screenshotting' is done by the operating system, and exposing ways to allow apps to know that they were 'in' the screenshot plus expose some metadata of their choosing sounds like a privacy nightmare

The apps don't have to know a screenshot was taken for this feature to exist; they could write into a passive "in case a screenshot is taken, use this as metadata" object data field that the OS uses when the user takes a screenshot

I don't think he was trying to justify or excuse his way out of his bad qualities in the second part; It felt more like he was pinpointing the reason. I'd say it's okay for people to give reasons for bad actions as long as they they still admit to wrongdoing and don't use that reason as an excuse for it being okay.

Indeed. It wasn't justification any more than Root Cause Analysis is making excuses for a systems failure.