No community, in the strong sense, can form in the society of transparency. Instead, chance gatherings [Ansammlungen] or crowds [Vielheiten] of isolated individuals, or egos, emerge; they pursue a mutual interest or cluster around a product line (“brand communities”).

today’s compulsive transparency no longer has an explicitly moral or biopolitical imperative; above all, it follows an economic imperative. People who illuminate themselves entirely surrender to exploitation.

the project of the panopticon had a moral—or biopolitical—motivation.

Strident calls for transparency point to the simple fact that the moral foundation of society has grown faulty, that moral values such as honesty and uprightness are losing their meaning more and more.

The society of transparency is a society of mistrust and suspicion; it relies on control because of vanishing confidence.

Instead of affirming that “transparency creates trust,” one should instead say, “transparency dismantles trust.” The demand for transparency grows loud precisely when trust no longer prevails.

Trust is only possible in a state between knowing and not-knowing. Trust means establishing a positive relationship with the Other, even in ignorance. It makes actions possible despite one’s lack of knowledge. If I know everything in advance, there is no need for trust. Transparency is a state in which all not-knowing is eliminated.

Transparency and power do not get along well. Power likes to cloak itself in secrecy.

Everyone should hand everyone else over to visibility and control; this would hold for the private sphere, too. Such total surveillance degrades “transparent society” into an inhuman society of control: everyone controls everyone.