I hit a lot of American sites that want to process my data in a malicious way that would be illegal.
Rather than fix the issue, the side just redicts to a “we’re sorry to our European friends” - like fuck off, it’s been years you cunts.
Anyway, to answer your question - it protects them from legal liability.
Basically the same here. WhatsApp is basically “dial-a-boomer” on my phone.
Little sad that Signal dropped SMS support, but I get it.