Account names in follow operation are not checked by design

I was asking me, what will be the output of the following script

from beem import Steem
from beem.account import Account

if __name__ == "__main__":
    stm = Steem(keys=["5BEEMBOTPOSTINGKEY"])
    account = Account("beembot", steem_instance=stm)
    
    account.follow("holger80\u0020")
    account.follow("holger80+")
    account.follow("holger80_that_is_great")
   
   print(account.get_following())

The output is

['holger80 ', 'holger80+', 'holger80_that_is']

Is holger80 now followed by beembot?

account2 = Account("holger80", steem_instance=stm)
"beembot" in account2.get_followers()
False

No beembot does not follow holger80, but three non existing accounts.

account.follow("holger80")

Now beembot follows holger80

"beembot" in account2.get_followers()
True

for h in account.history_reverse(only_ops=["custom_json"]): print(h)
{'required_auths': [], 'required_posting_auths': ['beembot'], 'id': 'follow', 'json': '["follow", {"follower": "beembot", "following": "holger80", "what": ["blog"]}]', 'trx_id': 'daa6ee4a808d37fc0348cee11ada95b6d558d2d2', 'block': 24537865, 'trx_in_block': 34, 'op_in_trx': 0, 'virtual_op': 0, 'timestamp': '2018-07-27T08:36:00', 'account': 'beembot', 'type': 'custom_json', '_id': 'b5aeae7e5cd4190d6c3c37d90c156aafeec4142a', 'index': 31}
{'required_auths': [], 'required_posting_auths': ['beembot'], 'id': 'follow', 'json': '["follow", {"follower": "beembot", "following": "holger80_that_is_great", "what": ["blog"]}]', 'trx_id': 'dee2f27051e0ba3090c332d1503ac8cd88e5a1a2', 'block': 24537774, 'trx_in_block': 18, 'op_in_trx': 0, 'virtual_op': 0, 'timestamp': '2018-07-27T08:31:27', 'account': 'beembot', 'type': 'custom_json', '_id': '64e4791010c3039b0e3fc33edcc5abf48ea22fed', 'index': 30}
{'required_auths': [], 'required_posting_auths': ['beembot'], 'id': 'follow', 'json': '["follow", {"follower": "beembot", "following": "holger80+", "what": ["blog"]}]', 'trx_id': '98c0d36c57789924345171f5a058dfa0758ea702', 'block': 24537759, 'trx_in_block': 18, 'op_in_trx': 0, 'virtual_op': 0, 'timestamp': '2018-07-27T08:30:42', 'account': 'beembot', 'type': 'custom_json', '_id': '0f0a637bc89b4c4e88c4c88dac4c92c1076a25ee', 'index': 29}
{'required_auths': [], 'required_posting_auths': ['beembot'], 'id': 'follow', 'json': '["follow", {"follower": "beembot", "following": "holger80 ", "what": ["blog"]}]', 'trx_id': 'cc33218787cc7708d3f43ea9da7d0f1114a63cd5', 'block': 24537735, 'trx_in_block': 54, 'op_in_trx': 0, 'virtual_op': 0, 'timestamp': '2018-07-27T08:29:30', 'account': 'beembot', 'type': 'custom_json', '_id': '4e59c7246f786c1e88180551c097e5a34e7c1846', 'index': 28}

I'm able to unfollow the non-existing accounts:

account.unfollow("holger80_that_is_great")
account.get_following()
['holger80', 'holger80 ', 'holger80+']

@holger80 is also not working

account.unfollow("holger80")
account.follow("@holger80")
account.get_following()
['@holger80', 'holger80 ', 'holger80+']
"beembot" in account2.get_followers()
False

I opened a new issue on github but closed it. It seems this is the intended behavior and won't be fixed. So check twice before you broadcast follow operations.