Facebook is remarkable in that, unlike other companies, it knows how to form a convincing apology: it is "very, very good at saying sorry," writes Mike Isaac in the New York Times.

As he points out, though, it has apologized so often about the same thing–rolling back its users' privacy in some way or another–that it means little.

"We really messed this one up," he wrote. The company introduced a new set of privacy controls to go with Mr. Zuckerberg's apology. … "We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it," he wrote on his personal Facebook page. Facebook introduced a way to opt out of Beacon soon after… "Sometimes we move too fast," Mr. Zuckerberg wrote. "We just missed the mark." Facebook introduced another set of privacy changes to remedy the older, unpopular set. … "I'm the first to admit that we've made a bunch of mistakes," Mr. Zuckerberg wrote, while also noting a batch of privacy "improvements" Facebook had introduced over a period of two years. "We can also always do better." …

One thing's different, this time: Facebook researcher Adam Kramer apologized, not Zuckerberg: "My co-authors and I are very sorry for the way the paper described our research and any anxiety it caused."

Previously: Facebook's massive psychology experiment likely illegal