IMPORTANT: Flagging/Down Voting Bug Found. Can Lead to Abuse.
So I tried to upvote someone's post today that had only a few hours left before payout and it wouldn't let me.
So I check the developer console for errors and found this message:
message
:
"10 assert_exception: Assert Exception↵_db.head_block_time() < comment.cashout_time -
STEEMIT_UPVOTE_LOCKOUT_HF17: Cannot increase payout within last twelve hours before payout."
Cannot increase payout within the last twelve hours.
I think I remember hearing something about this months ago but I don't remember why it was put into the code.
But here's the most interesting part.
I was going to upvote this post because someone flagged it in the past 12 hours. I verifed this on https://steemdb.com/ and the flag happened 10 hours before payout well into the 12 hour freeze period.
I was able to reproduce this issue on my own post:
- 8 hours left before payout. I can't upvote it but I can do this...
- I was able to flag it no problem. I tried to remove the flag with no luck I assume it won't because it's triggering the 12 hour freeze error.
Conclusion:
Now that seems like a bug to me. Can't upvote, remove a vote, remove a flag 12 hours before payout but I there's no problem flagging in the 12 hour period.
I think this can lead to abuse (In fact I know it's already being done) if more people know about this it could really give an unfair advantage to users in a flagging war where a bunch of people come in and flag posts hours or even minutes before the payout happens.
As a user you would think your payout is safe once it reaches the 12 hour freeze period but I've confirmed that's not really the case with this flagging bug.
I don't think this is a bug, I think this is intended and this is why:
If I upvote posts at the midnight hour of the pay period then I'm basically taking advantage of people not seeing how I'm siphoning off rewards for myself or my alts and they have no way to stop it really, especially considering that if you employ an alt without any rep or posts you can vote for your main account (plausible deniability over the alt account of course) and people wouldn't be able to flag the main account. This way if someone does decide to reward rape at the last hour people can watch out for this behavior and nullify it.
This is hardly abusive as flag wars aren't something the community supports or condones and using the "bug" to flag someone is no different then flagging at any other point, plus if it's a flag war then a flag at the beginning is probably a lot worse than one at the end as exposure is tantamount in the very first impression a post makes, or in that case doesn't.
Ya but If I can add a flag after the 12 hour freeze period why trigger the 12 hour freeze error when I want to remove the flag? I can see a scenario where someone flags a post in the 12 hour window, the poster convinces the flagger it was a mistake and now nothing can be done to remove it. If flagging is intended at anytime then the bug might be on the remove side of that flag.
Yes indeed that would be a problem, thanks for the post also, weird that it took this long for the bug to manifest so to speak.
I'm guessing not very many people have flagged a post during the freeze period so it was probably just overlooked.