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Comment by char | Hacker News Reader

I was actually really annoyed by Facebook's new linking of profile items, but not at all because of privacy issues. (I really don't care if anyone sees the things I put on Facebook).

I initially chose NOT to link any of my profile interests to their respective pages. I have no problem giving Facebook data for their open graph project; my fear was that I would soon be inundated with dozens of news feed items from all of my interests' Pages. So I unchecked all the items that had been on my profile for several years, thinking that they would still be displayed as simple text (as opposed to links).

Instead, they were all deleted! So I took some time to (partially) rebuild my list of interests as links, only to then of course witness the flood of news items posted by those pages. I have been 'hiding' them as they show up. Hiss.

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If you unchecked everything in the dialog, it warned you that everything would be deleted off your Profile. Did this not happen?

The majority of interests you would've been linked to would not give you News Feed items (they're "voiceless" Pages).

I wasn't warned. I scanned the dialogue page to see if there was any information, but couldn't find anything. I definitely could have missed a text block if it were either at the very top or bottom of the page and of normal font-size. But I certainly didn't see anything like, 'WARNING! By not linking to these items they will be removed from your profile. Are you sure you want to continue?', which is something I usually experience before things are deleted.

I understand fully that most of my profile items aren't actually associated with pages, or may be pages that don't post. But even taking that into consideration, there were still likely a few dozen (popular shows and bands, for example that I am positive have a presence on Facebook) that likely would be posting to my feed. I estimate I only added back 1/4 of the interests I had before, and about 10 of those posted on my feed today. It's fine because I can just hide them and actually obtain the settings I want, but it was a bit of a process.

You'd have seen something like the image on this link: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/facebooks_high_pressure...

Nope, I didn't see that. I wonder if it was because I left a few items that I knew would not be publishing to my stream (such as 'city'). Perhaps that box only popped up if a user unchecks every single item in each field?

Yes, I believe so. That is a fair point, I'll give that feedback to the people concerned.

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