> is this one of these things where Meta doesn't want the responsibility for this
Very likely, given the legal liability they are already facing from the "addictive" court cases that are turning against them. Moving the liability for "age verification" away means they will not also be facing a huge number of court cases accusing them of showing an underage person adult age content provided they followed the law's proscribed "ask the OS for the user's age" requirements.
Also, note that only a few months ago Zuckerberg was in court testifying that the single best place to perform "age verification" was in the operating system of a device. Now, like mushrooms after a long rain, at roughly the same time up pop bills in nearly every statehouse, Congress, even Brazil, that all read nearly identically and that all are so broad as to require "the OS in anything with a CPU do age verification". The nearly identical text in each highly implies a single lobbying entity is behind all of them (it would be quite the coincidence that 50 state houses, plus Congress and Brazil, all write nearly identical bills independently). And the connection back to Zuck's court testimony of "age verification is best done in the OS" highly implies that the single lobbying entity is Meta, or funded by Meta to obtain this outcome.
Very likely, given the legal liability they are already facing from the "addictive" court cases that are turning against them. Moving the liability for "age verification" away means they will not also be facing a huge number of court cases accusing them of showing an underage person adult age content provided they followed the law's proscribed "ask the OS for the user's age" requirements.
Also, note that only a few months ago Zuckerberg was in court testifying that the single best place to perform "age verification" was in the operating system of a device. Now, like mushrooms after a long rain, at roughly the same time up pop bills in nearly every statehouse, Congress, even Brazil, that all read nearly identically and that all are so broad as to require "the OS in anything with a CPU do age verification". The nearly identical text in each highly implies a single lobbying entity is behind all of them (it would be quite the coincidence that 50 state houses, plus Congress and Brazil, all write nearly identical bills independently). And the connection back to Zuck's court testimony of "age verification is best done in the OS" highly implies that the single lobbying entity is Meta, or funded by Meta to obtain this outcome.