It’s not a cult, but it has some cult like features - detailed membership tracking

[malkie]

On a practical note. I can't think of any easy way to have information about how many friends someone has without noting the identities of said friends. And I can't think of a practical way of keeping information on who one's friends are without observing and keeping track of friendly interactions. Unless, of course, someone asked all of the members in a ward who their friends in the ward/stake were. Either way, it would be an enormous job keeping such information up to date.

Of course, if the information is really vital to the LDS organization, perhaps they could have the Holy Ghost work on it in his spare time.

Any way, it would also, of course, be extremely intrusive.

Well, obviously the people on the local level know who a person's friends are. The question is whether they are making note of the identities of these friends in a database accessed by authorities in SLC. I find the whole thing more lamentable in its impersonal corporatism than creepy, but I can certainly understand others finding it intrusive and creepy. The LDS Church has a long history of being intrusive and creepy. I just don't think this is a very strong example of that.

Perhaps people in your ward have an idea of who your ward friends are. In the case of the young man that I mentioned, it was probably only because we played volleyball at church that people could identify us as "friends".

Also, I notice that the app identifies "church friends in the stake, not the ward. in my opinion it takes a lot more effort to find out and record who your friends are in the stake than in the ward.

The more I think about how this could be implemented, and how data could be gathered, the more nasty I see the intrusiveness.

[IWMP]

So they’re not just logging details of your attendance, they’re tracking who your friends are…that’s pretty creepy.

That's so they know who to send to their houses right?

[Kishkumen]

Also, I notice that the app identifies "church friends in the stake, not the ward. in my opinion it takes a lot more effort to find out and record who your friends are in the stake than in the ward.

The more I think about how this could be implemented, and how data could be gathered, the more nasty I see the intrusiveness.

That bothers me a lot less than Wilkinson sending spies into BYU classrooms or the Church reporting the license plate numbers of polygamists to government authorities. Of course, I choose not to be in the LDS Church because it is into members’ business. That said, some people belong because they want a community that keeps tabs on them.