It's one of great maddening mysteries of social media: the Facebook news feed.

Why do you see so many posts from Snarky Sam but not Best Friend Bob? A post about yesterday's weather today? Where are the updates from that local coffee shop page you follow?

Facebook uses an algorithm to sift through the chatter (1,500 possible posts on average) and serve up what you want. Some complex combination of your actions — what you click, "like" and post — on the network dictates what you see.

But after years of feedback from confused, frustrated users, the social network is ceding a bit of its algorithmic power by offering some new news feed controls. Facebook wants to know what you don't want to see.

The social network debuted the new tools a day after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg acknowledged users' news feed complaints in a town hall meeting. He pledged to keep working on improving users' news feed experiences.

"With news feed, our goal is to build the perfect, personalized newspaper for everyone in the world," he said.

Users have long been able to mute their "friends" — "unfollow" in Facebook speak — but the new controls add some nuance, letting you specify that you'd simply like less from Annoying Abe or Gullible Gertie. The changes also make it easier to track and update which friends you're following or not. (If you unfollow someone on Facebook, you're still technically "friends" and the person will not know you've declined their updates.)

How? Start by clicking/tapping the faint gray arrow in the upper right corner of any post. That's where you can tell Facebook to hide the post or, as the new features roll out over the coming weeks, tell Facebook you'd like to see less.