I caused people to drop out of university due to a lie I told

I started university in September 2019 and by March 2020 everyone had to return home due to COVID-19 restrictions. This meant that all exams which would have otherwise been in-person were moved online and made open book. Our course, like many, had a Facebook group chat that was used for support, reminders and sending memes.

When it came to exam season, essay questions were released at 09:00 and we had about three hours from when we first opened the exam documents to submit our final answers. Our university had a strict plagiarism policy that specifically outlined students should not discuss the contents of the examinations whilst they were going on. Despite this, students were sharing the exam questions in the group chat which meant that some were able to plan and write their essays before their time had even started.

One student raised this as a concern in the group chat during one of the exams and a few other students taunted her for being a stickler to the rules.

Without much thought, I went to our university's anonymous confession page on Facebook (this was not affiliated with the university) and submitted a confession saying that I had reported the whole group chat for cheating during an exam and that it was academic misconduct meaning that they probably would not pass the year. I had not reported anything. I ended up going to sleep shortly after this.

I woke up the next morning to over 500 messages in the group chat of people losing their shit. Over the next few days, the people who had been sharing the exams questions actually contacted the university out of concern and to defend their actions - little did they know that the university was actually completely unaware and they ended up incriminating themselves.

The university sent out an email about this a few weeks later and I'm aware of a handful of people that dropped out of university.

I feel extremely bad for the panic my words caused and that this actually stemmed from deceit, even worse that people ended up dropping out.