Privacy is hard because it’s not merely a technical problem. It’s applied to individuals by systems that most individuals have very limited influence into—and those that _do_ have influence often stand to benefit from eroding the privacy of others.

Precisely. And it's not only privacy, but individual sovereignty in general. I just wrote a mini essay about this half an hour ago on a different but related post and don't want to immediately repeat that, so here's the link to that comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49690354