Roger Scruton argues that friendship on the internet is not like friendship in real space. So what else is new? What he says about the levels of involvement and modes of attention that go with friendships outside cyberspace is true; but his argument is predicated on contrasting that with a form of friendship wholly confined to onscreen communication. And, of course, no one is bound by such an either-or choice.
Scruton could have said something about: how you can make friends on the internet with people you otherwise would not have met; how you can then consolidate and extend these friendships offline; how, even if you don't (because of distance, say), having electronic friends can be a rewarding experience in itself; how old (real-world) friends who live far apart can now be in touch with one another with much greater facility and regularity than formerly; how, the internet being (when all is said and done) part of the real world, friends can also cease to be friends because of what happens there; and how anyone whose friendships are wholly confined to the internet probably has problems aside from an addiction to their computer. But he doesn't touch on any of this.