Any for-profit entity hotlinking Commons is unfair. Heck, they have the right to redistribute freely the image as they see fit, instead of consuming resources that are a common good.
But this goes beyond that - it's some blind check of internet connectivity for the app, and doesn't get shown to the user. We're pretty sure of that, given that with the amount of noise that task generated, if there was an app featuring that image at least one of the ~ 90M daily "views" would've been someone reading these posts.
Basically no one is ever willing to wait for anyone else, as OP's reasoning shows pretty adamantly.
Of course they're grossly incorrect.