If there's an algorithm in charge of optimizing, it will be gamed. If there's a single algorithm controlling a large population, it'll be catastrophically gamed.

There is a more general rule than that, I would tie that to Goodhart's law/adage "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure".

It's similar here, when an algorithm is in charge of optimisation it has its heuristics, they will be gamed as they are measures that became a target.

This is such an obvious way to game the system though, if they had put literally any effort into trying to make a system that can't be abused, they would have caught it. Either the system wasn't thought through, or it was thought through by someone with no understanding of how groups of people behave.

It's obvious that people will hang phones from trees?

The reason you're reading this on hn today is specifically because it is novel group behavior.

Na he just means when developing something the first thing you try to do is think how can this be abused.

By handing out jobs to the closest device and not checking the last job that device received is poor programming.