I thought about that as well. They rushed to publish some unpolished PR pieces and FAQs right after the announcement and at very unusual times (3am in Cupertino) trying to damage control so my guess would be as well that they didn't even consider the backlash. Maybe they were really proud about the technology they implemented. It's a little bit sad if you think about it.
If you think about this, this is a really great innovation, which is left behind bad PR. There was a leak about their system before release (which got a lot of publicity, and was heavily missleading), so that might be a reason for their hurry.
I have been browsing their technical papers for couple of days now, and they have managed to innovate a system which has "kind of" end-to-end encryption, but enables access for specific (and only this kind of) content. They have managed to make encrypted system where they can lock themselves out, and can't answer for example the demands of FBI to show all images of specific user.
On the context of CSAM, this is an improvement for privacy, but being able to understand that, it requires great understanding of different technologies.
