I joined in March 2018, and the friends list were quite benign by the time I arrived on the scene. They’d taken the private messaging away before I got here though, and without that friends lists had almost no function left. 
Gifting was good though 
(I think they may even be trying to bring that back). And that generally stayed on the friendly side too. More a gift to cheer someone up or say thank you than an ‘I’m thinking about you playing with this 
’ sort of thing.
Anyone fancy a nostalgic look at gifting?
If they brought gifting back, would that make people feel differently about hanging out here?
(Gifting was a thing where you could anonymously buy another member anything from the Lovehoney site as long as they had a public wishlist. So sometimes you’d just get a mystery Tuesday dildo for no reason, and wonder if you’d started ordering things in your sleep. Often people would come on the I Got a Prezzie! thread and say they’d got something, and then the sender would reveal themselves too. It was quite fun, even if you were just on the sidelines. )