Mashable: 12 Things We Want Fixed on the Web
Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins about Mashable...
We here at Mashable have been going back and forth on the things we’d like to see for Christmas this year, in terms of what the Web and social media can do for us. After we marked world peace and 10,000 shares of Google stock off, we came up with a bit more realistic wish-list. Of course, a few plasma TVs and a Nintendo Wii would also be welcome 
Better Privacy with Facebook’s Project Beacon
Our biggest wish this year is for Facebook to either get rid of Beacon, or to make it less privacy invasive. We got part of our wish already. Personally, I’d like to see the mini-feeds and the news feeds over at Facebook become more useful. By this I mean allowing them to be exported more easily via RSS. I know some of the feeds are capable of this, and there are hacked-together ways of making it work as well, but for me to really get behind the idea of Project Beacon being not just good for advertisers, but good for me as well, I’d like to see Facebook give a little something back this year. To me. In the form of RSS.
Google Should Modify its Mission Statement
The #1 search engine is doing a bit more than organizing the world’s information these days. They’re bidding on wireless spectrum. They’re integrating everyone’s social graph. They’re providing platforms for new communication methods. They’re creating mobile alliances. Beyond the digital world, they’re creating maps of genomes on demand. They’re funding foreign startups. They’re engaging the free market in creating solutions to the world’s problems. They’re going green.
It is ok to admit it, Google. You want to be the internet. You want to fix the world. You can say it. I’m sure it will be quite liberating. Just come clean with us. We’ll still love you.
Net Neutrality. We Want It.
Here’s a tricky Christmas wish. I want network neutrality. I want to be able to throw up my BitTorrent client and not have it crap out at 95%. I want to have a conversation on Skype that lasts more the 20 minutes. I want ISPs to stop monkeying with my traffic. I don’t want the government to step in, because they’ll just gum up the works even more. But I want it fixed. Personally, I think telecom deregulation and de-subsidization is the way to go. I say we give it a shot. Santa, think you can make this one work?
We Want the RIAA and the MPAA to Quit It
The big music labels are realizing they should just quit. Radiohead made more money on one album than Warner made with their entire library this year. If the RIAA weren’t getting paid hundreds of millions a year to sue Warner’s customers, they may have more money to buy albums. All this while they get France to make P2P illegal. Meanwhile, the MPAA is getting legislation in place that forces universities to hunt down pirate students, or risk losing all federal funding. If I could get Santa to bring me one thing this year, I think it would have to be the bankruptcy papers for the RIAA and MPAA.
