Well in the SEO community, it's generally agreed that -- strictly according to Google's terms -- pretty much ANYTHING you do specifically with the goal of getting better search engine rankings is a form of black hat SEO. And black hat (as we usually mean it) certainly doesn't "break" the algorithm, but does (as you say) try to exploit loopholes.

Arguably a more accurate way to put it is that anyone in SEO seeks to understand the algorithm and take actions that will drive better search engine rankings for a website. But the white hat will see what the search engines are looking for (like quality content) and try to provide that while black hats will look for loopholes (like producing nonsense content with robots).