Private trackers tend to have more hard to find content available, especially if the tracker specializes in that kind of content. They often have the ability to make requests if they don't have what you're looking for too. On the good ones, the requests tend to be filled quickly. The content is well moderated, so you are much less likely to find malware or bad or low quality releases. The downloads are usually a lot faster too. Many people use seedboxes, so 1gbps+ download speeds are not uncommon.
this post was submitted on 28 Dec 2024
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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I joined one mostly for content in my native language for my kids, it's as good as impossible to find on public trackers. Initially I intended to only use it for that, but I have since abandoned public trackers completely and exclusively use the private tracker now. I don't find more time or effort intensive at all though, not sure what you expect to do beyond seeding to meet the tracker requiremens, I seed everything I've downloaded, so it makes no difference to me and I haven't noticed any difference whatsoever in effort to use a private tracker compared to a public one.
Personally I dont bother with private. I'd rather the access is available for everyone. Personally I think i2p is a much better focus for the community in the long term.
The public internet is for P2P exchange as well, no matter how much gov/corp tries to stymie it. I2P has its merits, but it would be sad to see it take off purely because people ceded the former territory for an obscure network layer.
What is i2p?
Look in to I2P
Even less content. But I2P is cool.
Yeah that's why we need more people to join in. To expand the content. I personally am slowly adding my library of high res Linux ISOs.
Semi-private trackers like TorrentLeech are a great step up from public trackers and they are relatively easy to join (e.g. seedbox promo). More content is available and well-seeded for longer periods of time.
It's not difficult to keep your ratio, even with a 50MBit/s connection (torrents > 15GB are freeleech anyway), as long as you seed 24/7. Or buy a seedbox for a while, build a few TB of buffer (autobrr) and never worry again.
Edit: Usenet is great because it's fast, and depending on your (non-english) language, it's a completely different league than public trackers. But I'd argue for english content TL (and a few others) is good enough.
TorrentLeech is semi-private!?
What's a private tracker then?
Semi-private just refers to how easy it is to join them. E.g. rutracker is considered a semi-private tracker, because it requires an account, but always allows registrations and does not enforce any ratio.
In that sense I was wrong in calling TL a semi-private tracker, because TL does require maintaining a ratio. But given it is possible to simply join via their seedbox offerings, it is not as private as some other trackers, which require proofs of good behaviour on other trackers and/or an application process.
Edit:
Public: no registration required
Semi-private: registration required, but always possible; lax ratio rules
Private: registration required, mostly through invites/applications; anti-leech ratio rules
Just because it's easy to join doesn't make it semi-private.
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Public tracker all content is available publicly no registration required.
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Semi-private content is available publicly but registration may be required or optional (ex: Demonoid), torrents maybe set as private.
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Private the content isn't available publicly, registration is required. Torrents are set as private (open trackers, no DHT)
If you look at Prowlarr indexers you can see what is public, semi-public or private. All private require registration, where public or semi-public not so.
Your points about torrents being set to private and enabling/disabling DHT are good.
Semi-private content is available publicly
Do you mean the content pages on the tracker are publicly available? Because there're private trackers with no original content, so I don't think this is a differentiating factor between semi-private and private trackers.
As you've written, there're trackers categorized as semi-private on prowlarr where an account is required to view anything besides the login page.
Would it be weird to get a seed box when I already have a separate plex server I've been using to torrent and an NAS, just so I can seed 24/7 without risking leaking packets or something?
It depends on what trackers you're on and how much storage you have, and how risk averse you are.
First of all, binding your torrent client to the VPN interface should prevent all leakage.
Additional precautions like running your torrent client behind a container like gluetun should make it pretty much impossible to leak your IP to adversaries. Or if you have a plain Linux server, running the torrent client in it's own network namespace also achieves the same result.
The other big reason to get a seedbox is to be able to maintain your ratio. This depends on your tracker.
E.g. I have enough storage for a large enough seeding size and enought torrents to get sufficient bonus points. Combined with a bit of upload here and there, I get enough upload/buffer to snatch what I want.
On many trackers, large enough torrents are often freeleech, so they don't count towards the download stat anyway.
tl;dr
If you bound your torrent client to the VPN, I'd seed with your NAS unless you don't get enough upload to maintain your ratio on your specific private trackers. Storage is way cheaper on your NAS.
It is always time to join a private tracker.
Don't private trackers have less content? And they also gatekeep? Sorry I know nothing about this
The have significantly more content (in my experience), and the gate keeping is pretty much just having standards to keep the community safe, and the media seeded.
You might have some luck with DHT search engines like btdig or damagnet
I tend to look towards full blu-ray/remuxes/flac that sort of thing, private trackers are more suited towards that with both p2p groups as well as the general scene groups.
Public torrents work well enough but the release groups that cater to public torrent indexers tend to be in a race to the smallest file possible. Hence you see a ton of "4K" uploads that are tiny for download but are crap for playback beyond a phone screen. Even yify himself knew he wasn't aiming for quality encodes. But generally speaking there will always be people looking for those type of uploads and public torrents do cater towards that.
Honestly public trackers are awesome. All you want for free and I get more leaches so I can help more people. I only use private for niche interests such as Asian movies and audiobooks
If it isn’t in the public trackers I use one of my main private ones
The only effort it takes to join private trackers is usually in the quick application you have to do. After that, there’s no more effort than normal.