For me reading someone writings, replying, reacting, zapping is a form of relationship.
And we don't have only social clients, we have many other, often hybrid, apps. The most used Nostr apps have DMs along the social feed.
Discussion
I definitely don’t see reading or even replying as any form of relationship. Follow is very different to me and does not signal trust of any kind. I can follow just to see what a person is about without ever trusting them. Contacts sounds like we keep in touch and I added them to be in touch. But that’s not really why I follow - they haven’t earned the right to be a contact.
This is an interesting point of view, and we already explored it when WoT entered the scene: if you follow someone that you don't trust, with the current WoT implementations you validate him anyway, since he is present in your social graph. This is a problem, that probably lists could easily solve.
And if this is the path, "contacts" could effectively have a (minimal) trust meaning.
I can’t stop a client I’m using from renaming the thing, but it would sure be annoying.
Wot is also weird. I sometimes see people in my wot feed that feel like they are intruding in my space because I haven’t followed them. Other times it feels normal - depending on the mood I guess.