[charcircuit]

Laws exist that dictate what apps are allowed to do depending on the user's age. This means that in order to follow the law they must collect the user's age. If collecting the user's age is a common requirement of apps it makes sense for the operating system to expose an easy way to do that to make app development easier on that platform.

[enoint]

No, it makes sense for an App Store to do that. Or, that HTTP headers are set at the device or network proxy.

User account creation wizards could just create the dot files for the App Store. These weird laws ban OS.

[charcircuit]

The issue is that software can be installed from outside of the app store on pretty much every OS. Also if you have multiple app stores it would be convenient if they could all get it from the same place.

[enoint]

I'm skeptical we should ban all operating systems which permit this without an interactive age check. Shouldn't the free market acolytes be arguing that parents can choose between competitors which offer ever-improving parental controls?

[charcircuit]

I agree with you, but it seems like the free market is moving too slowly in regards to this pain point for parents which is resulting in demand for them to force change through the legal system.