I recommend these tools for tweaking Win10 annoyances and customizing privacy (including disabling "Windows Defender" entirely): - https://www.oo-software.com/en/shutup10 - https://www.thewindowsclub.com/ultimate-windows-tweaker-4-windows-10 (full list of tweaks: https://www.thewindowsclub.com/list-of-tweaks-available-in-uwt4)

It should, but people complain that Defender regularly 'forgets' what you have excluded.

You could've just disabled the service