They are interested in collecting as much data on everybody as possible. Having data that is verified by the State and required by law ensures that their user account data is much more valuable to sell to advertisers and propagandists (but I repeat myself). They are, however, aware enough to know that age verification is an unpopular thing to have enforced by laws and so they operate through intermediaries in order to influence these laws to be put into place without having their ‘brand’ associated with an unpopular thing. Meta has spent more than $2 BILLION dollars trying to influence countries and states to pass age verification laws. What we’re seeing globally isn’t a sudden interest by the people and their representatives in creating age verification. We’re seeing the global result of many billions of dollars of bribery, lobbying and corruption (same thing) by a company who wants to have laws that require that you to give your data to them. Data that would be incredibly valuable due to the veracity of the source (State IDs). Anonymous Facebook user accounts are not as valuable. Facebook can infer a lot of information about the user of the account but that is just inference. Having a requirement that every account be linked to a government ID (who’s verifiability is backed by a system of laws and punishments) means that they don’t have to guess who you are anymore and that is incredibly valuable. The fact that Zuckerberg is spending more then $2 BILLION dollars to make it happen should give some idea of the worth of such data.