> I may be in the minority here, but to be honest I think I actually prefer getting ghosted.

I don't think it's appropriate for recruiters to ghost candidates.

However, I will say that I think many younger candidates really would prefer being ghosted to being explicitly rejected. The nature of interviewing means that I send a lot more rejection e-mails than offer letters. A surprising number of candidates have very negative reactions to rejection letters, from trying to argue that we've made a mistake to posting negative reviews of our company on Glassdoor or even Google Maps. People hate the feeling of rejection.

I still send polite rejection letters, but I can see how jaded interviewers would err on the side of ghosting candidates to avoid possible retribution. It only takes a few serious over-reactions to make you extra careful about dealing with candidates.