It's not mind control - even charm person is not mind control - it's a magical influence, and friends is a very mild magical influence - it doesn't make them obey you, it just temporarily alters their perception of you, to consider you a friendly acquaintance (not even a close friend), and you don't neglect your duties and important objectives just because a friend you know asked you to. It's a very mild spell, which is why it's a cantrip - it doesn't achieve anything that you couldn't achieve with normal conversation, it just makes doing so easier and faster, at the cost of a lingering hostility and resentment from the individual afterwards.
Crown of madness, compulsion, dominate person, command and even suggestion - these are examples of actual mind control spells that compel your target to act in specific ways, or let you dictate what they do and how they behave. Charm Person, and Friends, are not this.
There is also a misunderstanding about 'Hostile', and that is the crux of the problem here.
Hostile does not mean 'will attack you' or 'get a red border and is now an enemy'; that's not what it means and it's not what it's ever meant within 5e nomenclature. Hostile is a dispositional state - a hostile NPC is inclined to mistrust you or your intentions, and is not inclined to help you, and may be difficult or even potentially impossible to convince to assist you or to let you do as you wish. That is what it means; nothing more than that.
Having NPCs attack you for using the spell and by extension turning whole factions against you, is absolutely not correct interpretation of this cantrip spell.
In video game terms, such as a Larian game, what friends should do is raise the disposition of the character along with its mechanical effect, and then after the duration expires lower it by a much stronger factor, so that when you next talk to that npc afterwards, they are in the angry and unhappy dispositional state (orange towards red on Larian's happy bar), and don't want to interact with or assist you. The game has the capability to handle doing this, and it would be a more correct interpretation of the cantrip's function and consequence. The movie vendor, upon being influenced to give you a discount because you're mates, may later put up 'do not serve' signs with your portrait, and gruffly let you know that you're banned from their cinema for your behaviour; they might call the guards to escort you off the premises if you don't leave... they don't immediately leap over their serving counter and try to stab you with the popcorn scoop on sight, unless they're already unhinged and strongly inclined towards violence naturally.
