Mixers help protect financial privacy which matters to a lot of people. Thing is, some use them for illegal stuff and that's a problem. The industry should focus on building privacy tools that stay legal but still shield users. Better exchange security could also stop hacks before they even start.
That financial privacy which mixer protect is the reason why they have labeled it with a lot of bad names, same tools which ordinarily and common person use for just increasing their privacy and breaking the connection between inputs it’s same tools which bad actors also use to hide behind the shell and make things much more difficult and complicated for them to be trace after their evil deeds.