To the best of my knowledge CA abused a free feature (API access) designed for legitimate usage to collect user data for nefarious purposes. Facebook was acting as a neutral carrier here and respected the user's intention of sharing their data with CA.
Hilarious.
The Cambridge Analytica scandal is in regards to a nefarious 3rd party using Facebook's pipes in a way that violated Facebook's policy. There are emails to show that Facebook knew about this, and did not act to remove CA's access to said pipes (no, [1] there are literally emails about this that were found during discovery).
You even mentioned it
> To the best of my knowledge CA abused a free feature (API access) designed for legitimate usage to collect user data for nefarious purposes
Yes. They abused it. They abused it and were allowed to continue abusing it because Facebook's business model is data, not user privacy. You're blaming CA for what FB quite literally (and I mean quite literally) allowed them to do, told them to stop doing, then turned a blind eye when CA _continued_ to do it.
Again. Not my opinion. It's a matter of factual record.
Links - https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-emails-show-workers... - https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/social-media/newly-released-mes...
Edit: Formatting