Technologists engage in an understandable, but ultimately harmful behavior: when they don't want outcome X, they deny that the technology T(X) works. Consider key escrow, DRM, and durable watermarking alongside age verification. They've all been called cryptographically impossible, but they're not. It's just socially obligatory to pretend they can't be done. And what happens when you create an environment in which the best are under a social taboo against working on certain technologies? Do you think that these technologies stop existing?

LOL.

Of course these technologies keep existing, and you end up with the worst, most wretched people implementing them, and we're all worse off. Concretely, few people are working on ZKPs for age verification because the hive mind of "good people" who know what ZKPs are make working on age verification social anathema.