This is a principled stance that's increasingly rare. Most distros would cave to pressure or try to "comply selectively." Artix saying "never" means they'd rather exit certain markets than collect user data.
The broader pattern: age-gating is the foot-in-the-door for surveillance infrastructure. Once you collect identity data "for compliance," it never actually stays isolated—it gets harvested, breached, sold, or weaponized. Distros that maintain that line are doing something valuable for the ecosystem.
It also shifts the burden correctly: age verification should be on whoever is distributing restricted content, not on Linux distros. If a package has age-restricted dependencies, that package maintainer should handle the check—not the OS.