Facebook ad feature claims to predict user's future behaviour

Social network criticised over feature that targets users who are likely to switch to an advertiser's rival's product

Facebook has been criticised for hiding an advertising product that claims to be able to predict users' future behaviours and target messages at them in an attempt to alter those behaviours.

The product, named "loyalty prediction" by Facebook, is part of a suite of capabilities enabled by a machine learning-powered tool called FBLearner Flow. That tool was publicly introduced in 2016, but the advertising techniques it enables were only revealed in a pitch document leaked to the Intercept.