Facebook Beacon Already Changing Opt-In Default Settings?

Facebook seems to be shifting its stance on Beacon yet again.

Yesterday, Friday, when a Beacon alert came up after playing a game on Kongregate.com, I returned to Facebook and the checkbox next to "Always publish stories sent to my profile from this site" was unchecked, so it had to be selected.

Toady, Saturday, when a Beacon alert came up after buying movie tickets on Fandango, that checkbox was already checked. Is this a change of heart for Facebook? Are they randomizing it? Is it different per publisher?

I still need to get through to Facebook, which will be tougher over the weekend, but the pair of screenshots pasted together below tell the story (click for an even larger view). To be clear, this is how I found the checkboxes when arriving at Facebook. Also, you can see the New York Times blog post from Thursday with the setting unchecked. For more coverage, see yesterday's post on how Facebook can fix Beacon. While some users may in fact want to opt in to all notifications, letting them make that extra effort will win over both the pro- and anti-Beacon users.