By now, you’re probably sick of hearing about the Facebook Beacon debacle. Over the past few weeks since its controversial launch, we’ve heard the outcry and backlash from privacy gurus, social media moguls and the industry at large. Much of the uproar has circled around behavioral targeting and how it bleeds over into the world of user privacy (or, lack thereof). After reading many blog posts and articles, it seems to me that the issue is less about privacy and more about user choice (again, or lack thereof).

Facebook’s mission is stated as being a “social utility that connects friends’. Up till now, much of their success has stemmed from giving users a wide array of choice around what they want to share (music, movies, apps) with whom (friends) and how (poke, wall writing, dedications). The launch of Beacon took away the user’s choice around what they want to share, with whom and when. Instead, Facebook made the choice that virtually everything is share-worthy with all friends – unless you happen to see the tiny checkbox and figure out that your actually ‘choosing’ to sharing lots of info. For the record, Facebook has now changed the program so the user must opt-in, but it took a series of petitions and bad press for them to come around.

I think about my college-age cousin and how Beacon impacts her. She and her friends share everything humanly possible on Facebook (almost too much, if you ask me). To her, the term ‘privacy’ is relatively meaningless. She spends most of her waking hours online and doesn’t think about privacy and how it can be taken advantage of - she just trusts the sites, products and apps she uses. She has grown up believing that her intentions are understood and placed first by the places she goes online. Why shouldn’t it be? User choice starts with understanding your users and what they want to do with what you’re building. I guess Mark and crew figured this out the hard way.