Ghost Banning

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What Does Ghost Banning Mean?

Ghost banning is a process through which a user is invisibly banned from a social network, website or online community. Ghost banning enables an administrator to ban a user while still providing that user with the ability to browse through and use the available features, while still preventing the user from interfering with other users.

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Techopedia Explains Ghost Banning

Ghost banning first emerged in large social networks. It was implemented to identify, monitor and eliminate spammers and restrict their activities. For example, a ghost banned user can access the social network, review updates from his or her connections, etc., but none of that user’s activity, such as content or link sharing, is visible to connections or even general subscribers. This enables the website administrator to segregate spammers from the lot and to put suspicious users under scrutiny until their activities are on par with the terms and conditions of the site in question.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.