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Facebook to explain its News Feed at Aug. 6 event

Facebook
Duane Hoffman / NBC News

The Facebook News Feed is a source of frustration and confusion for many. Why does it show the things it shows? Why doesn't it show every photo posted by that one girl you like? How do you control it? The social network will finally break things down on Aug. 6.

According to the press invitation for 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET on Tuesday at Facebook's headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif., Facebook will be "taking a deeper look at the ranking algorithms that determine which stories appear at the top of your feed" and discussing "a specific update to organic ranking that’s coming up."

We also expect to hear plenty of reminders about the signals we can give Facebook to help it better rank content in the News Feed. For example, liking an item, commenting, sharing, or otherwise interacting with a post can indicate that we want to see more items like that. On the flipside, hiding the post from our News Feed using the dropdown menu, signals that we don't want to see similar items as much.

How Facebook intends to improve or change the News Feed ranking remains a mystery though — until Aug. 6, at least.

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