[ineptech]

It also doubles as a way to verify that someone is a real person using their real identity, which is starting to become pretty important these days. If Alice and Bob are both on this platform, the confidence Alice can have in the proposition "the Bob account is really controlled by a guy named Bob who really knows some people I know, as opposed to being AI or an overseas scammer" would be roughly proportional to the strength of the friend network connecting them. That sounds useful.

[dgellow]

I’m not convinced that’s the case. A relatively small subset of bad actors can join the network, create new accounts on a second phone, tap (or find a way to fake that process via the API), then eventually use those accounts from bots.

It’s of course more friction, which in itself is good to avoid spam/bots, but over time all of that can very likely be automated

[palijer]

Bots don't matter if you aren't connected to accounts you haven't tapped phones with though.

[buggymcbugfix]

I think this point is crucial:

> [...] would be roughly proportional to the strength of the friend network connecting them.

[lopis]

There's a German gay social/dating app called Romeo that has a feature where you can show which people you know personally. There's no physical validation though, so it's easy to fake.