The same reason they made iMessage e2ee, which happened many years before CSAM detection was even a thing.

User privacy. Almost nobody trades in CSAM, but everyone deserves privacy.

Honestly, this isn’t about CSAM at all. It’s about government surveillance. If strong crypto e2ee is the hundreds-of-millions-of-citizens device default, and there is no backdoor, the feds will be upset with Apple.

This is why iCloud Backup (which is a backdoor in iMessage e2ee) is not e2ee by default and why Apple (and the state by extension) can read all of the iMessages.

I didn't ask why they would want E2EE. I asked why they would want E2EE without CSAM detection when they literally developed a method to have both. It's entirely reasonable to want privacy for your users AND not want CSAM on your servers.

> Honestly, this isn't about CSAM at all.

It literally is the only thing the technology is any good for.