Research exploring digital intimate publics tends to consider social media platforms and dating/hook-up apps separately, implying distance between social and sexual communication practices. This paper troubles that delineation by drawing on LGBTQ+ young people’s accounts of negotiating safety and risk in dating/hook-up apps, in which friendship practices are significant. We explore four key themes of friendship that arose in our analysis of interviews and workshop discussions: sharing mutuals (or friends-in-common) with potential dates/hook-ups; making friends through apps; friends supporting app negotiations; and friends’ involvement in safety strategies. Through analysis of these data, we firstly argue that friendship is often both an outcome and an organising force of LGBTQ+ young people’s uses of dating/hook-up apps, and secondly, that media sites commonly defined as social (e.g. Instagram) or sexual (e.g. Tinder) are imbricated, with friendship contouring queer sex and dating practices.

探索数字亲密公众的研究倾向于分别考虑社交媒体平台和约会/连接应用程序，这意味着社交和性传播实践之间存在距离。本文通过利用LGBTQ +年轻人在约会/连接应用程序中的谈判安全性和风险谈判的叙述来困扰这种划定，在友谊实践中这很重要。我们在对访谈和研讨会讨论的分析中探讨了四个重要的友谊主题：与可能的约会/伙伴共享共同对象（或共同的朋友）；通过应用程序交朋友；支持应用谈判的朋友；和朋友参与安全策略。通过对这些数据的分析，我们首先认为友谊通常是LGBTQ +年轻人使用约会/连接应用程序的结果和组织力量，其次，