> why they enables CSAM in the first place?
Apple's privacy measures, such as not scanning your Cloud photos, is what helps enable CSAM.
Sexual abusers very often take photos and often upload these to their communities, and Apple has given them a secure device with which to do that. This is becoming increasingly widespread — the number of reported CSAM material grew by more than 50% last year, to nearly 70 million images and videos [1].
Due to Apple's privacy, the numbers look like this: Facebook reported over 50 million combined images and videos, Google reported 3.5 million, Dropbox, Microsoft, Snap, and Twitter over 100,000 images and videos. Apple reported only 3,000 photos in the same period, and no videos. [1]
Sexual abuse is experienced at some point in childhood by around 1 in 9 girls, and 1 in 53 boys. 93% of perpetrators are known to the victim. In 2016, CPS substantiated or found strong evidence to indicate sexual abuse of 57,329 children [2]. That's CPS, meaning in the US alone.
> They must have known the consequences, PR and otherwise.
The PR consequences of that have gone largely unnoticed, interestingly, and it's more so their attempts to curb it that are getting flak from the media.
I suspect this is because we can't create statistics on what we can't detect. There can be no "Apple is enabling, and allowing to continue, the sexual abuse of 50,000 children a year."
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/07/us/online-child-sexual-ab... [2] https://www.rainn.org/statistics/children-and-teens