this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2024
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Privacy

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On P2P payments from their FAQ: "While the payment appears to be directly between wallets, technically the operation is intermediated by the payment service provider which will typically be legally required to identify the recipient of the funds before allowing the transaction to complete."

How about, no? How about me paying €50 to my friend for fixing my bike doesn’t need to be intermediated, KYCed, and blocked if they don't approve of it or know who the recipient is? How about it’s none of the government’s business how I split the bill at dinner with friends? This level of surveillance is madness, especially coming from an app that touts "privacy" as a feature.

GNU Taler is a trojan horse to enable CBDC adoption. They are the friendly face to an absolutely terrifying level of government control in our lives funded by the same government that tries every year to implement chat control. Imagine your least favourite political party gaining power. Now imagine they can see and control every transaction you make. No thanks.

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[–] kbal@fedia.io 57 points 1 year ago (1 children)

GNU Taler is not your enemy. It may not solve every problem you'd like it to, but its adoption by the masses would be a vast improvement in privacy compared to the current state of commerce in every country where it has the slightest chance of happening any time soon.

[–] ReversalHatchery@beehaw.org 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

I have a feeling its adoption would bring the end of cash a big step closer.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 year ago

Not any closer than already existing commercial cashless payment solutions (which are much, much worse for privacy).

[–] nothacking@discuss.tchncs.de 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (8 children)

You people realize that most crypto is even less private? Every transaction ever can be viewed by everyone, forever, by design.

Sure, a crypto wallet might not have your name on it when created, but good luck buying or selling any without giving away your identity.

[–] shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip 17 points 1 year ago (6 children)
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[–] refalo@programming.dev 8 points 1 year ago

good luck

except there are many sites dedicated to doing exactly that. you can send cash in the mail, giftcards, exchange via other cryptocurrencies, etc.

[–] autonomoususer@lemmy.world 7 points 1 year ago (9 children)
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[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

CBDCs are coming whether you like it or not and a GNU Taler based payment system is currently our best mitigation strategy against them.

It's pointless to compare GNU Taler to crypto-currencies as it is a payment system and not a pseudo-currency.

[–] sntx@lemm.ee 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yes, Taler by design allows identifiction of the receiver.

It does not reveal the sender.

It allows you to create and arbitrate your own tokens and to create your own "bank".

Here's a Video doing a good job at explaining it jn detail.

[–] JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee 20 points 1 year ago (19 children)

Yeah, the fact that out payment system is so centralised is definitely a bad thing. But GNU Taler, from what I understand, is just trying to work within that system. It didn't create the system, and it doesn't have the power to replace it.

[–] unwarlikeExtortion@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

It didn't create the system, and it doesn't have the power to replace it.

But it does support the system by being a part of it

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[–] unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de 16 points 1 year ago

I think you are misinterpreting things.

[–] slazer2au@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 17 points 1 year ago

Central Bank Digital Currency. Its a controversial project by many central banks around the world to establish a digital cash alternative, but the current proposals are usually not very privacy friendly.

[–] qaz@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

Sure, it's worse than monero and cash in terms of privacy, but that's not what it's supposed to replace. There are plans to use Taler as an alternative to card payments in the EU and that would be a great improvement. Currently all payment data is visible to multiple of companies, the shop, the bank, and many middle man and is often sold off to other commerical entities. Taler would stop that.

[–] datendefekt@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Recently read an ELI5 of the digital euro and was pleasantly surprised. If it works as designed, you can perform offline payments from one device to another, which sounds like your use case. No central servers, no blockchain.

[–] GravitySpoiled@lemmy.ml 7 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Your first example is tax fraud if you hide it

Edit: it looks like you edited your post to state the guy repairing your bike is "your friend".

Noone is going to go after him if he just fixes your bike. But if he fixes the bike of his 1000 friends each month, they will go after him if he didn't declare it.

[–] Zak@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

That may technically be true, but it's currently very normalized. Do we actually want to denormalize it? Should the government know about every trivial transaction?

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 7 points 1 year ago

For small sum in-person payments, regular cash is still the best option and will continue to be so, GNU Taler or not.

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[–] ganymede@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 year ago

not if they're only covering the cost of parts

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 4 points 1 year ago

Which jurisdiction are you referring to? GNU Taler isn't specific to any particular country or currency.

[–] autonomoususer@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

When crypto bros stop shilling anti-libre software, maybe i'll start to care.

[–] FaceDeer@fedia.io 6 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Funny how we're big into privacy here, and then money comes up and lots of people are "wait no, not that kind of privacy."

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