AG used to have the referral feature, which gave a user 10 points if a user they invited signed up. It was removed because people were creating fake accounts to rack up their AP.
I think you may be reffering to adding a friend on AG without refferal links for AP.
As you may already know, refferal links were abused just to get more AP, and I feel the same may happen with the idea above. Here is a list of reasons that refferal links do not exist anymore.
1. AG users were creating alternitive accouts, just to get more AP for the main account.
2. AG is already so popular that it doesn't need refferal links.
3. Refferal links may have potentionally crashed the servers on AG, due to an overload of accounts and AG was trying to prevent that.
4. AG referral links issues were reported on the reddish-orange pushpins at the top of the first page of the forum, so it's serious.
