I didn't say "layers don't mean anything." I said names don't mean anything, especially the OSI layers which as your post points out never really became a thing.
TLS is a encryption layer that works with many protocols. Assigning some special number to it isn't the important part.
> TLS is a encryption layer that works with many protocols. Assigning some special number to it isn't the important part.
Yeah but the point is TLS also doesn't work by just magically changing TCP to TLS (where would you even change that?). It works by using HTTP over TLS. The issue is also not with OSI layers, but the fact that there are dependencies between different components that are supposed to be encapsulated from each other. In this view, HTTPS (HTTP + TLS) isn't really different from HTTP/3 (HTTPS + QUIC).
TLS is a encryption layer that works with many protocols. Assigning some special number to it isn't the important part.