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>I would love to see a social network demand a higher standard of friendship from a user before other users are allowed in their network - based on something more than reciprocal button pushing, so kind folks don't feel compelled to accept a friend request out of politeness.

Like Facebook?

There is no one type of "social network" out there.

The solution is for people to learn how to use various social networks effectively. Facebook is for keeping some sort of connection with people you know or once knew. Twitter is for content, be it about activism or entertainment. Instagram is for people to boost each other's self esteem so they collectively feel better, at least for some time.

For personal connections, what we really need are small, immutable communities like a small town or a school class. People who talk to each other on a daily basis. This is the only way humans are accustomed to live and judge their own worth and the progress they make.

This effect can best be observed on Instagram. By wiring very carefully curated moments of a top percentage of millions of people to our brains, we're only making ourselves feel worthless and put ourselves under enormous mental stress.

Allow me to broaden the topic.

A lot of this era speaks about equality. As if everything should be flat and free to go in and out. But I very often feels that only "hills" matters. People overcome them when they do want to perceive what's at the top, and often make something of it. Instead of just wandering around without efforts or care.

I wonder if other people feel like this about this flat vs hills thing (sorry for that very badly name analogy)

Nextdoor sends you a postcard in the mail to the physical address you register with. You validate your account with the PIN on the post card.

This way you're fairly certain that you're only interacting with your close neighbors.

Twitch provides a good solution to this in someways.

It's highly interactive, especially with IRL channels, and the options for interaction are following, subscribing (which is following but with a $$ donation per month + perks), and chat.

Many streamers have links in their chats automatically blocked, and there's a good variety between small streamers with sane chats and streamers with hundreds of thousands of viewers who's chat is much more similar to Twitter's reactionary dynamic.

I definitely think something like that would have potential for virality; something where maybe in order to add someone, you have to be in physical proximity with them when adding.

I could totally see that becoming kinda gamified, the objective being to collect as many of your friends' on it (by actually physically meeting them) as possible (like Pokemon Go, lol)

Maybe something like "meet in person, exchange contact information, communicate via phone, text, email?"