Facebook was a great way to keep in touch with friends that I don't really speak to anymore. Ex: People I went to college with 10 years ago. Now that FB is mostly unused, I have no idea what is happening to these people.
You would never call "friend" such a person in many other languages, in both Polish and Italian we have a word for such people which is similar to acquaintance.
Because by the description you people don't seem like friend at all. You just happen to have hanged out a decade ago for some time but never really had a meaningful long lasting relationship like a friendship.
Yet in the UI in these languages isn't using the nuanced word, is it? I don't think it's an issue of the language, they sugarcoated it deliberately (or everyone misunderstood the meaning anyway).