Back in 2009, Lawrence and I were speaking with one of our early investors about spam messages. Specifically, Craigslist postings at the time were full of low-quality ads, and for anyone with a legitimate apartment, they would find their inboxes quickly filled with unsolicited offers. We then learned about ghost-banning.
“Getting rid of spam is easy!” the investor told us excitedly. “You just need to make sure the spammer doesn’t realize they are banned.” This particular investor knew a lot about spam – he was one of the inventors of modern spam filtering today.
So finding and identifying the spam is not hard. But how do you make a spammer go away? The practice known as “hell banning” or “shadow banning” comes from the old days of dial-up modems and bulletin board systems, but deployed in modern apps such as WeChat, Reddit, and RentHop’s apartment finder and messaging system.
Naming History Behind Ghost Banning
The idea is, eventually the problematic or abusive user will see that his or her messages appear to be sent to and seen by everyone else. However, the crowd just ignores them completely; no one even engages with or interacts with the offensive post. The banned person, unable to elicit a reaction from anyone, leaves and brings their toxic attitudes elsewhere.
Perhaps it’s like the classic movie Ghost, when the hero desperately tries to have an impact on the world around him but is unable to do so? Or how about Sixth Sense and the classic quote: “Walking around like regular people… They don’t know they’re dead.”
Editor’s Note: We updated this article to enhance readability.
