by <id> I mean that a feed id goes there. when I give it a label, I like <id:a> or <id:out> that is just to emphasize that they are different values. follows: {A:{B: 1}} just means A follows B (whoever they are).

Wether following means "friendship" is a human layer interpretation. It just means you choose to replicate them, and are willing to advertise that. (btw, I definitely recommend being able to put any kind of relationship message in a private message, but that doesn't need to be modeled in the relationships data structure.

@noffle if you (A) had your hops set to 2, declaring someone (B) to be 3 hops would put them just outside your reach. If someone (C) followed you (A), this person (B) would be 3 hops from them (C). If C had hops=3, then it would include B. If you set it to 99, it would be well out of reach of reasonable hops settings.