The 2011 situation you linked to, domain tasting, wasn’t the registrar reserving a domain (like someone claimed occurred last week). Domain tasting was when an

The 2011 situation you linked to, domain tasting, wasn’t the registrar reserving a domain (like someone claimed occurred last week). Domain tasting was when an actual end customer reserved the domain, tested how much traffic it received, and let it expire without paying if it wouldn’t make them money. There was still an explicit purchase from a customer, the customer just didn’t actually pay. This obviously harmed the ecosystem and I’m sure not advocating for it (nor recommending Godaddy), but it’s not an example of a registrar front-running real customers.