Since these articles tend to actually bury the data that was scraped:

  > .. the information likely included one's "public profile, page likes, birthday and current city" ..

This information was limited to what was publicly accessible on the site rather than some private data as many outlets tend to claim.

The data wasn't "scraped." Here's the part you left out describing what really happened:

> Aleksandr Kogan, a data scientist at the University of Cambridge, was hired by Cambridge Analytica, an offshoot of SCL Group, to develop an app called "This Is Your Digital Life" (sometimes stylized as "thisisyourdigitallife").[15][16] Cambridge Analytica then arranged an informed consent process for research in which several hundred thousand Facebook users would agree to complete a survey for payment that was only for academic use.[15][17] However, Facebook allowed this app not only to collect personal information from survey respondents but also from respondents' Facebook friends.[15] In this way, Cambridge Analytica acquired data from millions of Facebook users.[15]

Is that not parsed as,

> (public profile), [private] page likes, [possibly private] birthday and [possibly private] current city

?

(I've put in my best understanding of the other elements. AIUI, you can make the latter two public, but if I recall the scandal, that wasn't what occurred.)

I am not sure that this is the case.

The app had access to data about the friends of its participants.

AFAIR that included attributes that were set “friends-only”.

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