### Explanation Friends and followers functionality is the explicit social graph layer of a platform — the set of mechanisms by which users declare and expose connections to other users: friend requests and mutual friendships, one-way follows/subscriptions, group and channel memberships, block- and mute-lists, mentions and tagging of other users in posts and photos. The graph is often publicly visible (Twitter/X following and followers, GitHub followers, VK friends). Even when individual lists are private, indirect signals — mutual friends count, frequent interactions, reactions, mentions, co-tagging in photos — still leak structure. For OSINT, the social graph is one of the highest-signal sources: it links pseudonymous accounts to known identities, exposes professional and personal context, and lets investigators pivot from one confirmed account to many adjacent ones through friends, frequent interactions and N-th level connections. This functionality is distinct from algorithmic recommendations ([[SOFL-12. Recommendation Systems]]), which surface *candidate* connections, and from invite mechanisms ([[SOFL-19. Invites]]), which bootstrap new connections — Friends and Followers covers the *existing*, declared graph and how it is exposed. ### Examples {{some links to articles, videos, etc}} ### Types technical, behavioural ### See also - [[SOFL-12. Recommendation Systems]] - [[SOFL-19. Invites]] - [[SOFL-22. Accounts]] ### Typical weaknesses - [[SOWEL-2. Producing Social Graph]] - [[SOWEL-9. Saving Contacts]] - [[SOWEL-20. Having a Hierarchical Structure]]