Has basic professional courtesy become optional in recruitment?

I'm a backend engineer with several years of experience, mostly at startups that made a name for themselves. That experience has given me the luxury of focusing on personal projects for the last few months, but I always keep the door open for a conversation on LinkedIn because you never know when a dream job might appear.

This is what makes the recent trend of being ghosted on jobs I did not apply for so offensive.

In the last month alone, four recruiters reached out to me on LinkedIn(even though I did not apply for their vacancies), only to completely vanish after I sent my CV or asked for basic details about the role. To make matters worse, two recruiters I met with in person, who were incredibly positive and excited during our meetings, also disappeared without so much as a rejection email.

I know this isn't just happening to me. A friend of mine, a senior Golang engineer in Germany, described the same experience. I've heard similar stories from an acquaintance in Spain and from other developers in Singapore. This seems to be a global issue.

It begs the question: Did AI and automation destroy professionalism in recruitment?

WTF is going on? Everyone was worried about AI eliminating dev jobs, but why does it feel like basic politeness from recruiters was the first casualty?