The discovery of NSA snooping has at least one positive effect: several tech companies are trying to point to sudden transparency. Almost every day there is news now about which networks with which governments work together and where they get their data.

Facebook yesterday released its first “Global Government Requests Report”, which contains the government requests to Facebook in the first half of 2013. According to Facebook’s statement, the report contains all information requests by government authorities between 1 January 2013 and 30 June 2013.

It is interesting and not surprising to note that the US by far the largest data hungry country on the list. The American government made between 11,000 and 12,000 requests for data on 20,000 to 21,000 Facebook users in the first six months of 2013. The other top countries in the list are India with 3,245 requests (4,144 affected accounts), the United Kingdom with 1,975 requests (2,337 accounts), Germany with 1,886 requests (2,068 affected accounts) and Italy with 1,705 requests (2,306 accounts).

“We have stringent processes in place to handle all government data requests. We believe this process protects the data of the people who use our service, and requires governments to meet a very high legal bar with each individual request in order to receive any information about any of our users,” Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch said. “When we are required to comply with a particular request, we frequently share only basic user information, such as name.”

Facebook has forwarded the relevant information to the authorities in almost 80% of cases. This is a slight increase compared to the last half of 2012. However, Facebook’s report is not as detailed and informative as that of Twitter or Google. All those companies have to contend with the fact that they have been allowed to publish any information based on section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

The transparency reports of social media companies are welcome step, as they provide an insight how governments use these platforms and services as a source of information. At the same time, the reports illustrate that social media platform such as Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc. are not simple services and platforms but increasingly play a political role.

These reports have provided a useful accountability mechanism for users to know what governments are asking for and how often. Transparency reports also inform users as to what intermediaries are doing to protect their privacy when it comes to sharing data with governments.

Transparency reports should mainly show one thing–how little we know about the ratio of companies that have come to play an important role in our everyday lives. How little we know about their political agenda, although they are increasingly politically active through their actions.