It was for plausible deniability because of regulatory scrutiny. Regulator's dead now, so now there's no downside and only upsides to spying on your users.

PR. They wanted to seem like the good guys, but they get your messages through backdoors like the automatic backup.

i am guessing that they just dont really need to pretend to care anymore. e2e messaging was a big marketing push, not ever an ideological thing. i assume they no longer believe the marketing benefits outweigh the downsides.