RE: Onboarding millions of users
There are more than one 'apple'. If yourselves opt to decide who the impostor is and who the legitimate owner is, it will only open up a giant can of worms and lead to lawsuits. Imagine if the platform gets huge.
Take my own example for a second. We hold the earliest Internet popular iteration of the 'guiltyparties' name dating back to 2002 (to my knowledge). The bands currently sharing that name came afterwards, which is why we own the .com. If we had nothing better to do and if one of those bands took the name, we could technically win in court. There are myriad such conflicts and as the team responsible for the platform, you don't want to get into the business of judging who is who since it'll get real dirty real fast.
What I'd suggest is sticking to the original idea of preventing squatters. Let's say I'm a squatter and I register 'apple', but I sit on the account and do nothing, hoping someone will buy it off me. I'd suggest implementing an activity monitor on all accounts -- inactive for more than 60 days --> loss of name. Granted there may be exigent circumstances, such as hospitalization of owner, that may delay activity, but those would be rare.
The difficult part would be preventing the simulation of activity. In that, the system should first define what a 'desired level of activity' is. Let's say that's 1 video every 30 days and 1 comment every 7 days. Letting it run on pure comments would just generate comment bots, but videos must be created. 'Resteem' type posts should't count as they can be easily botted anywhere.
While I'm throwing ideas out, I'd suggest getting rid of the option to pull videos off Youtube. If you look at my blog that's exactly what I did to try out the Viewly platfrom. I pulled a video I liked, but not my own work. Should Viewly become saturated with others' videos pulled by unrelated parties who are not owners, there will be a massive conflict creating a roadblock to the platform going mainstream. Alternatively, if the content is 100% original, I can see it becoming huge.
You're right, we don't want to play the 'central' registry and get into people's business. Nor is this really possible on a decentralized system.
There is no way to detect fake activity.
The proposed system allows the real Apple to make the highest deposit, and as such, acquire the name. Smaller apples can either find something else, or register a free, permanent name, like 'Apple-Club' or whatever their business is.
Understood.
Another question: How would you handle a premium name that has flags/downvotes against it? Would these persist when it switches hands? And if not, what would stop the same person from simply trading it between two accounts?
Capital.
A name cannot have flags or downvotes.