No, it's adding friction for honesty's sake. You don't have six thousand friends. You have five friends, tops, and like two hundred acquaintances tops[0].

There's nothing to "get back into"-- it was all just a lie to flatter you. The network effect stops working for you in the low three digits. You're just part of a people directory owned by some corporation.

0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number

For Facebook I keep my friends list light - less than 50 people, but there are people who I live a far ways away from - my parents for instance are 5 hours away. I don't want to have to drive to them just to prove they should be part of my social network.

I mean, if you want, you could choose to not use this nonexistent product. You don't have to hypothetically use it.

True, and I probably wouldn't. Just throwing out what I see is a potential issue.