Why abuse?
BCH difficulty was very low due to few post-fork EDAs, and many miners started switching after the price started increasing just before retarget.
The result was mining next 2016 blocks much quicker.
This, in turn, led to x4 diff increase for the next period.
So, this is not "Error by design" but rather "works as designed"
Because it's only happening because of a combination of price and hashing manipulation.
Which is causing instability in BOTH chains. As the hashing power moves around following the best payout, one chain speeds up, the other slows down. Until the profitability flips again, and they all go back in the other direction.
When you have self interested whales, and self interested miners, playing the numbers to make the most money is always likely to happen. And clearly has been for the last few weeks.
But in the longer term, I agree with the Bones guy, that isn't good for anyone.
And if a third chain is spawned in November, I hope to god it dies off quickly because the hashing jumping between THREE chains will only make things worse ....