There is still plenty going on around Steem and Hive. @steemitblog have been posting '100 days of Steem' over there, but so far there is nothing radical. Day 1 announced they were doing this, on day 2 they could not come up with anything and day 7 repeated day 3 in Spanish. Their suggestions of curation projects and photography challenges are things the community did anyway.

The respective token prices have been fluctuating. Someone has been dumping HIVE to push the price down, but masses of STEEM is being sold as people power down. I will have another power down today and will be buying more HIVE. I will be doing this using Ionomy. I find I have to buy Bitcoin with STEEM and use that to buy HIVE, but it just takes minutes to do. Give me a shout if you need help with this. @ionomy will airdrop some of their own tokens if you have at least 300 HIVE in your account, so I will leave some on there.

Prices from @coingecko who celebrate six years this week.

Activity on Hive is fairly steady with both PeakD and Hive.blog ranking above Steemit on @stateofthedapps. PeakD was even about Splinterlands for a while, but the latter is still getting a lot of players. I keep playing and just reached Gold I again.

This week I am picking out some Hivians (Hivers? Hivists?) who make me think. Social media does not have to be all cats and memes.

• @atheistrepublic are using @threespeak to post videos where they discuss news stories around religion. Current events have given them plenty of material with some preachers claiming they can defeat COVID-19. Good luck with that. I think they deserve more comments engaging with these topics and they are generous with their comment votes.
  @arseniclullaby is a comic artist, but he also thinks deeply about the state of the world. I guess the two things do overlap as a good comic should make you think. He has been posting about the pandemic and has some thoughts on avoiding getting too stressed out by it.
• @the-bitcoin-dood also posted some thoughts. He is not too far from some of the worst areas of the USA for infections and deaths.
• @acidyo and others linked to a piece by @theycallmedan on Hackernoon that clearly explains the chain of events that led to the Hive fork. It is well worth a read.

As always you can post your own suggestions in comments or do your own #FollowFriday post.

The doghouse

@r0nd0n posted about the mass-creation of Hive accounts that attempt to imitate various accounts with variations on the name. Some are copying posts by those accounts to appear more real. So far these are being tracked and downvoted to make their reputation scores zero or less. This should reduce the chances of them being followed accidentally, but be wary. @themarkymark has also posted about this and is part of the effort to deal with them. This could be disgruntled Steemians trying to cause trouble.

I am still looking out for other abuse on Hive, but there is very little vote buying going on. Let me know if you see any.

In these crazy times the Steem/Hive battles can seem less important, but you can make Hive part of your social activity to keep sane. I was part of a Zoom call this week organised by @paulag. @kklye and @revisesociology were there and it was good to chat about how things are going. If anyone else wants to do such a call then let us know and I will join if I can. We are spread around the world, so it will depend on timezones.

Stay healthy, stay sane, stay thoughful.

Hive five!