It's easy for a large company, especially its leadership, to be out of touch with their customers. Many instances of this are listed in another reply, but it's

It's easy for a large company, especially its leadership, to be out of touch with their customers. Many instances of this are listed in another reply, but it's not all that unusual. I would definitely believe that Apple thought this solution was more private than the kind of scanning Google and Facebook does. Especially now that they're drinking their own cool-aid about being a "services" company where the line between "my device" and "your cloud" starts to blur. Edit: It's also notable that news of this was leaked before Apple was able to officially announce anything. This means that Apple's marketing department was not able to control the tone/narrative as well as they normally do. The first thing many people heard was "Apple will be scanning your phone" without any of the nuances that came later.