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You can mute them. But that has no effect on their activities. The'd still post garbage and reap from the reward pool. The only viable action is flagging. But you need to keep enough voting power left to vote the good guys. Without whales flagging these accounts, we minnows are pretty much helpless against these spammers.

im lost in terms of how steemit works... whats a minnows where can I find the info? it cost money to flag someone? lol

how do the spammers make money? doesnt someone have to upvote for people to get paid?

They can self-upvote and upvote among themselves. It doesn't cost money to flag anyone. Flagging is just the opposite of upvoting.
https://steemit.com/faq.html
the above link should help you at least to some extent.