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Facebook has updated the way that it chooses status updates and stories that appear in your News Feed.

The company is to start measuring how long you spend reading other people’s posts, photos and comments.

Now if you linger on a certain posts - without liking, commenting or sharing - Facebook will assume that means you think it's important and so will start showing you similar content.

In the past, the social network has generally only looked at likes, comments and shares to decide what you are most interested in.

However, after user research, Facebook says it has learned that just because someone doesn't click on a post "doesn't mean it wasn't meaningful to them".

"There are times when, for example, people want to see information about a serious current event, but don’t necessarily want to like or comment on it," says the company.

Now the social network will start to prioritise those stories that you spend more time hovering over.

So the more time you spend poring over an ex-partner's holiday snaps, the more likely you will be to see more stories from that person. So your stalker tendencies could start becoming more transparent.

The update is being rolled out over the coming weeks.