"This means it’s likely that Vance’s list of friends was largely populated by the contacts in his phone when he set up his account in December of 2016."

The first part of the article seems to imply that he's close friends with these people, close enough to be paying them back for drinks or splitting the bill at restaurants, but I don't think it's that damning that he's got them in his contacts considering that 2016 is when he got big with his book.