Facebook apologizes about ads

Facebook seems to prefer to ask for users' forgiveness rather than permission. A "humbled [Facebook] CEO Mark Zuckerberg issued a statement apologizing for the way his company rolled out the Beacon ad platform," Internet News reports. He said that now users could bow out of the program entirely, "bowing to pressure from privacy advocates and many Facebook users." More than 50,000 of them had signed a petition initiated by MoveOn.org which demanded that Facebook not broadcast information about users' purchases on other Web sites without their permission, the Financial Times reports. Internet News added that "Facebook’s retreat marks the second time it has been forced to make changes to a new technology because of privacy concerns. Last year, users protested after it introduced 'News Feed,' which allowed users to keep track of their friends’ actions on the site." Here's the New York Times's coverage.