This most commonly happens to 'random' people (those not involved in the heated debate) if they buy upvotes for their posts. Some very heavy whale accounts flag posts that buy upvotes under specific circumstances, such as @grumpycat who flags people buying upvotes on posts older than 3.5 days.
I think this in itself is good, as the only reason to buy upvotes that late is to secretly generate more income from your post. This is to the detriment of all other authors.
Ah I see, I didn't look into too much detail on the specific case, I just read the post about him explaining the situation that's all.
Not trying to shoot myself in the foot here. But I've just put $0.5 SBD into minnowbooster on a post that's 4 days old. I did so because I read somewhere that that's how you should do it. Soooo, I'm now at risk of being flagged?
Like, I appreciate if it's a bad thing to do then I won't do it in future, but I would imagine there's a high possibility that people will get flagged when they've unknowingly done it. I personally had no idea I was doing anything "wrong" by doing so and flagging someone like myself would be very discouraging for someone just starting out.
I see you've been on Steemit for far longer than I have, so an explanation of things like minnowbooster and why they're useful, when to use them and the etiquette around them etc. would be of great benefit to me.
Thanks :)
The etiquette on Steemit is very much defined, and enforced, by the users with the largest investments in the platform. They have the most to lose if Steemit fails, and the most to gain if it does well. Only very recently, the account @grumpycat started to flag posts older than 3.5 days that bought upvotes after this time.
I would not worry. The upvote buying that is being countered is on the order of hundreds of SBD, and flags are only used to return huge paid upvotes to zero. You should not even crop up on the radar.
The best time to buy upvotes is soon after posting. This way, the extra vote weight helps your post get onto the Hot and Trending feeds which gives you exposure. After a post is several days old, even a massive upvote is unlikely to return it to those feeds.
Ah I see, thanks for the clarification and reassurance. I suppose when you look at it that way, I can see why "whales" would want to make sure everything is running steadily and efficiently without corruption.
Oh and thank you for the large up vote too!
By the way, I'm curious, do you enjoy your Biomedical Programming job? It sounds very interesting, I studied Biomedical Science myself and did a year in Computing afterwards so it fits my educational background quite well.