We've made it to the end of another working week without Steem dying off! It is always a risk with the low Steem price and lack of new users, but a great core of people keep inspiring me here. Steemit and @steemmonsters continue to do well on State of the Dapps with Steem as a whole closing in on 12,000 active users. That is a definite improvement on recent stats.

The doghouse

I will slip this section in early this week to explain the image I have used. @pocketechange got caught out buying votes and the good people of @SteemflagRewards did their duty for Steem by reducing his rewards. Since then he is not daring to post on this account for fear of having his rep further reduced. The fact is that we would leave him alone if he opted to be a better member of the community. We do not care too much what he says, but anti-social behaviour has to be discouraged. He keeps editing his last post to slag off various SFR folk. He also uses his alternative account @pocket-change to popst about us, allocating Scum-bag Awards. I was the 'lucky' recipient of one of these. He reckons he can somehow reduce our Steem value to $50, but that would mean getting Steem to practically nothing. I would be interested to know how he intends to do that short of buying millions and giving them away. I proposed that we should get some shirts made and here is a possible design.

I do not like attacking people, but I will continue to defend Steem from abuse where I can. I can only remove a few cents, which is not exactly grand larceny. I have been hit by Haejin before who could take off dollars, but that is really not going to cause me sleepless nights.

If you want to help reduce the drain on rewards by people exploiting 'bid bots' or otherwise leeching then please consider using that free downvote power you have. You can automate it with Steem Rewarding by following a downvote trail. Drop in on the Steem Flag Rewards discord to chat with the team.

Follow Friday

Here are some people worth following.

• @basilmarples has put up a song by @sazzler that you can buy for Steem or Leo. I actually have almost enough Leo, so will be doing so very soon. I am expecting more cool stuff from these creative folk soon.
• @katharsisdrill has been busy elsewhere lately, but should have a crowdfunding campaign for his Phill from GCHQ comic soon. I look forward to having a physical copy of that for my collection.
• If you are interested in discussing some controversial topics then you should check out @atheistrepublic who post video discussions of various news items. These are often about religion as you might expect. They still have a nice delegation to give out votes on good comments.
• You should definitely follow @pennsif if you want to know what is happening on Steem as he is doing his daily news posts again.
• Tomorrow is another Steem Power Up Day run by @streetstyle. There are prizes to be won by smaller accounts. I do not qualify, but will still power up some more Steem.

Please post your own #FollowFriday suggestions in the comments or your own post.

Steem on!