I'd be just as livid if it were the brits doing it, so please take your bias elsewhere. Doing this "group content" accelerates your exp gain by a factor or approximately 3 to 4 times as fast as people doing it "normally". Gaining exp at a much faster rate than the rest of the populace is NOT a "quality of life" improvement. Oh please, we have several people at the highest rank, by doing it the old fashioned way of grinding missions/small irregular AI fleets in groups. The entire point of the fact is that it takes much longer to do it that way. The "quality of life improvement" just makes it a hell of a lot faster, which is why people call it an exploit.
I did a lot of grinding doing AI fleets in a group. Some days we'd get 1 3rd rate + 5 frigates fleets (the fleet composition was randomized at server maintenance, so we'd be stuck with 1 3rd fleets for the whole day), those were slow to exp. Some days we got 3 3rd rates and 2 frigates fleets, exp was very good. Not to mention, the fleets respawned irregularly, in different ports, forcing us to find them after battles. Doing the exploit, you could spawn in 10 3rd rates, 15, why not 24. No time to find the fleet, no pesky frigate spawns that just make exping a lot slower, just those juicy 3rd rates, and in numbers you'd never ever get without the exploit. The fault is not with the people who THINK this is an exploit, it lies with those DOING the exploit, to gain an unfair advantage.