Privacy fights shift to payments, TVs and phones
GNU Taler is preparing to operate in Germany, and the thread immediately questioned whether EU regulators will tolerate meaningful payment privacy, or choke it with KYC like crypto. Others argued stablecoin chains already won. A Show HN on turning a smart TV dumb then smart again drew comments that the market is flooded with 'Smart (actually Surveillance) TVs' so not buying one isn't really an option. And a report that Dutch authorities hacked Jared Kushner's phone, which Kushner called false, adds state surveillance to the pile.
The pattern is a steady drip of users wanting out of default tracking while regulation and market structure make exits harder. People are building workarounds, from Raspberry Pi and Kodi setups to payment systems, but adoption is the problem.
Many commenters think the windows for these alternatives are closing or already closed.
So what?
There is real demand for privacy-respecting hardware, payments and software, but regulation and distribution are the hard parts, not the tech. If you build in this space, plan for compliance from the start and sell on a concrete benefit like control or reliability, not ideology.