They created consent where there wasn't any, and attempted to sway the emotions of hundreds of thousands of people at once for the negative. It's not important

They created consent where there wasn't any, and attempted to sway the emotions of hundreds of thousands of people at once for the negative. It's not important for the effect, it's important and period-defining because A: it was the first publicly-admitted instance of Facebook actually using what they had to do harm (admitted to in a way that implied they didn't realize they had done harm), and B: because it laid out how the rest of the decade would look in regard to the behavior of tech companies. What you think about the study itself isn't the interesting part; statistics/psychology aren't actually science. It's the actions and motive found within of the researchers and company that are of interest.