I think you pointed out the issue there in your response.True but because they have to answer in hard code, it's not an easy trick for devs to keep up with shifting sands, whims and global trends of players, all at the same time. Stuff like this will help to inform devs of how to get the game to police itself but it's a truism that experience is what you get always right after you needed it! People joked about stranding people with carriers in beta .. but the specifics, of how players were recruited to the slave ships is only obvious now, after the event.
Also to be fair the two examples you give don't really compare with each other, either .. the first group (who were helped) were explorers whose position was given away by community management who joined the expedition, live streamed it, gave it a profile. The second group (who weren't helped) were slavers, which is illegal under all jurisdiction except anarchy and there's no evidence to suggest noobs were only recruited from anarchy systems. Meta version yes (dev magic) but they received a .. police response.
People joked about stranding people with carriers in the beta.
As a multiplayer game developer, it is your responsibility to anticipate how your mechanics will be used or abused. If it was common knowledge that stranding was possible with FCs, a remedy mechanic should be built in. It boggles my mind how the stranding possibility wasn't considered in the design phase of the game feature.
Years ago, ganking was seen as such a significant issue that a brand new C&P with "hot ships" and "ATR" was developed as a patched response. In a game with vastly asymmetric gearing capacities, and no pve pvp open partitioning, the developer is so "surprised" that ganking is an issue they have to develop brand new mechanics to try to address it. Really? 20 years of MMOs paved the road on how to integrate socialization and pvp into a successful game experience.
FDEV isn't poor. They can afford to hire a few Harry Wizard's during the design phase to explain how a game feature will be exploited, or used to grief other players. FDEV then needs to build the appropriate mechanics up front to diminish the impact of those mechanics applications.
Slapping a penalty on people that paid for the game, but used the mechanics of the game as it is designed, with the side note of external communications about in game events informing the decision to ban the players is not what I would call best game design practice.