Housing - Friends Only

[InkstainedGwyn]

Its weird enough though that removing someone from your friends list doesnt kick you of theirs too - infact, you can still even send them mogmail and such.
I'm not sure if thats intentional, to "protect" you by not letting the other person know you've removed them or just sloppy programming - to be honest: my bets are on the later.

That's possible, but I have seen people who are very concerned with making sure that other parties don't know that they're removed/blocked/etc - i.e. "does someone who has been blacklisted get a notice that they can't send a tell/that the tell doesn't go through?" Given that some people may actually be dealing with real world abuse (or may just be frightened of repercussions or of exacerbating a situation) it does matter to some people. Whether or not that factors into why it's the issue, I can't say, although you're right about the sloppy programming. But it's also not necessarily a bad thing to have, or maybe as an option.

[Jojoya]

snip

Removing a real world abuser from a friend's list is more dangerous than keeping them on it. Even they don't live in the same household, they have frequent contact with their victim and demand access to account and phone records so they can review what the victim has been doing. What's going to happen when the abuser demands access to their victim's account and discovers the victim has removed them from a friends list?

It also makes it harder for the victim to avoid the abuser in game when the abuser can track their location but the victim can't tell where the abuser is to find a way to avoid them.

No victim is going to remove an abuser from a friends list until they are already taking steps to distance themselves from the abuser and remove them from their life.

This is just bad programming that sets up more potential for player harassment than it avoids. There's no reason for a player to be worried about whether someone knows they've been removed from a friends list unless they're trying to take advantage of that other player in some way, and that shouldn't be encouraged.