You think so? I believe some privacy upgrades could be implemented as soft fork.
Just think how many Bitcoins are owned by Binance, Coinbase and other centralized exchanges and services, some of them even have their mining pools.
I am sure they would be all be against adding privacy protocol changes for Bitcoin, because of fear of regulators could hurt their business.
If they don't mixers and coinjoin I could only imagine reaction to Bitcoin becoming privacy coin.