>This is scary as hell.

"The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

If it looks like a conspiracy, it's probably one.

It's not even a conspiracy at this point, Meta was proven to be lobbying hard for this via small proxy companies.

And why? What's in it for Meta?

[Edit: Never mind, others have explained elsewhere in the discussion. It's the lawsuits Facebook is losing for addicting kids. So rather than, you know, stopping doing that, they want to instead legally force us to alter every OS on the planet. Disgusting.]

Just answering with a possibility here, but they could be seeking freedom from liability for failure to moderate content or ensuring their service is "not harmful". If it's only for consenting adults, and every adult can be pinned down with an identity, whatever happens can have the blame assigned away from meta.

edit: I took too long to write this :)

And they can offer an age verification product now too.

I wonder if they plan to provide "services" to web sites that need age verification... via their app and Facebook account..

As someone that doesn't have a Meta account (and will not), this could become potentially problematic.