No, it doesn't go places we "do not want it to go". What part of zero knowledge doesn't make sense? How precisely does a free, unlinkable, multi-vendor, open-source cryptographic attestation of recent humanity create something terrible?

It would behoove people to engage with the substance of attestation proposals. It's lazy to state that any verification scheme whatsoever is equivalent to a panopticon, dystopia as thought-terminating cliche.

We really do have the technology now to attest biographical details in such a way that whoever attests to a fact about you can't learn the use to which you put that attestation and in such a way that the person who verifies your attestation can see it's genuine without learning anything about you except that one bit of information you disclose.

And no, such a ZK scheme does not turn instantly into some megacorp extracting monopoly rents from some kind of internet participation toll booth. Why would this outcome be inevitable? We have plenty of examples of fair and open ecosystems. It's just lazy to assert right out of the gate that any attestation scheme is going to be captured.

So, please, can we stop matching every scheme whatsoever for verifying facts as actors as the East German villain in a cold war movie? We're talking about something totally different.