Regarding mixers and exchanges, you rightly said both provide a service, both are businesses. Both of them have been used to accommodate the transfer of stolen coins or those gained from illegal or maybe illicit sources. Whereas some exchanges might pull the KYC and investigation card, mixers do not do that.
The fact they
can do that will never imply that they
will do that, indeed.
I recall a few weeks ago certain users were openly stating they were happy to display either the Yobit x10 banner because they saw no difference between Yobit and mixers and argued anybody showing a mixer in their signature should be getting the same treatment as those showing a Yobit or x10 banner.
I use to believe that the community, this community, as a whole, knows better. And the fact that Yobit banners are usually not welcome is a result of many things, not only the way they are running their business (and sorry, but whoever still believes in ICO fairy tales may deserve their fate).
Since there's freedom of speech, users with those banners may be tolerated, but in some cases having that banner in the history may harm the reputation,
no matter how they convince themselves it's ok to wear the culprit banners.
Obviously the two do not correlate but that was the false justification put forward saying mixers were almost exclusively used for illegal activity. Moving forward, there is no doubt some users have taken advantage of the anonymity mixers (claim to) provide in order to hide some sort of criminality but as was pointed put in the previous post, the estimated figure currently stands at around 8% and that is fairly low considering the reputation some users are trying to paint about mixers in general.
For me the ethical concern surrounding mixers in the argument of illicit activity versus general users sending their funds from their exchanges direct to mixers in order to make their holdings effectively unknown after they are moved from any centralised exchange - is a non-argument. Mixers are providing a service for users that do not want anybody to know how much crypto they hold, if a tiny minority of users take advantage of that service and use it for illegal activity then there is not much that can be done at this moment in time.
I am a fan of Monero, so I know very well what you mean. Some things can be used for illegal activities and will be used for illegal activities (and I keep telling that US dollar bills fall in the same category), but that doesn't make them automatically bad, illegal or fair to be presented as tools for criminals.
I don't like people to look into my pockets and Bitcoin allows that too easy. Mixers fix that. Monero also fixes that. Is that illegal, I don't feel so.
Could the mixers "behave" better? Maybe. It may also be up to the centralized exchanges and big holders to approach them with some interesting proposals.
All in all, wasn't also Bitcoin "advertised" by media as drug money and so on? But time has shown that they are wrong. Haters are always gonna hate.