Do you prefer private or public trackers?

As I get more and more invites to private trackers, I’m finding that I find myself spending more and more time on public tracker websites.

I’ll only use private trackers if I can’t find what I’m looking for on a public tracker. Private tracker rules can get pretty onerous and I prefer to just avoid the whole scene if possible.

If I’m honest, this opinion surprises me. I didn’t expect to prefer public trackers. I always thought that private trackers were so cool and exclusive. I don’t think that way anymore.

yuuunikki,

deleted_by_author

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    WarmApplePieShrek,

    For what?

    yuuunikki, (edited )

    deleted_by_author

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    WarmApplePieShrek, (edited )

    What are you trying to download? Good private trackers only focus on one type of content. There are average general ones too.

    yuuunikki,

    deleted_by_author

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    WarmApplePieShrek,

    then yes, there are private trackers for this

    Mandy,

    Private trackers have, always been a bunch of snobby dingleberries

    dudemanbro, (edited )
    @dudemanbro@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    My home-base is a private forum (DDL). I think of it as a place where people gather the best media from around the internet. We may not get it first but it eventually makes its way there. There are also many exclusive uploads (mostly encodes) but people do some fantastic work with upscales of movies and/or TV series. The user base is also part of the many private trackers the world has to offer. I am part of like 2 private trackers and they are phenomenal as well. I also use public trackers extensively as well as there is actually a lot of stuff out there. I will always try and seed for public trackers but I definitely don’t go as long as I would for private ones (just cause I don’t want to get dinged) (Yeah I could use a VPN but too lazy, even though I am in a place that don’t give many fucks about media piracy). I prefer DDL because I don’t have to maintain ratio, but I do understand that with private trackers there can be some more longevity (but isn’t really guaranteed). There are also other private trackers of the index variety that aren’t built around ratio which can be nice.

    There can be a lot of rules with private trackers, and yes some of them are really annoying, not gonna lie. The rules are there for a reason, for the most part. For some it’s about building a community, while for others it’s about making sure stuff survives for as long as possible. There are so many tools for a fellow seafarer to have and private trackers are just one of them and they serve a purpose. I am of the belief that all information should be available to everyone forever, but the world don’t work like that and the long dick of the law can really fuck you life up. I think a valuable lesson from private trackers is that it makes one not just be a leech and makes one give back. There is nothing wrong with leeching, but I always like to think that piracy is about sharing the wealth. (not trying to moralize piracy, to each their own)

    But as you said, public trackers have A LOT of stuff. So much media can be found on them. Private trackers help if you want the best of the best with regards to certain media or for hard to find stuff. Each have their place and it all about using the tools available to you

    WarmApplePieShrek,

    I hate DDL. The fucking delay times, javascript nonsense and ads.

    dudemanbro,
    @dudemanbro@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    A lot of the private DDL forums dont deal with any of that. It’s more on the level of “If you know, you know”

    GingeyBook,

    How do you go about getting invited to a private tracker?

    I seed all my Linux isos on public trackers but I’m not active in any communities

    Will an owl show up someday with a letter?

    WarmApplePieShrek,

    /r/trackers has a lot of info, and /r/trackersignups tells you when trackers are open for signup. Too bad they aren’t on Lemmy.

    jrbaconcheese,

    You get an invite from a member. Or you can trade if you have an invite to spare, but I think it’s frowned upon by some.

    SEND_NOODLES_PLS,

    I’ve been having difficulty joining private trackers as well, but mostly I’ve just been trying to apply to a few that I think I’d like to join. Don’t quite understand why I don’t get an invite though. I maintain a perma up seedbox, and wouldve thought that was mostly what’s important for private trackers.

    UnRelatedBurner,

    imo get to know somebody who’s in to invite you, and you will become that somebody that ppl would want to meet.

    subtext,

    Go and interview for a tracker like RED (interviewfor.red). From RED, you can get just about anywhere within the private tracker world if you’re a good member and rank up.

    rambos,

    That one is hard to maintain. I think torentleech is best for new peeps

    boooooboo, (edited )

    There are much easier trackers to get into that doesn’t require this much prereading prior.

    Private trackers (not the biggest ones though) do open signups from time to time too (ie no interview no vetting, just sign up), so look out for those.

    The most important thing is if you’re into the content offered on the site - RED’s only attractive if you’re an audiophile for instance, it doesn’t have movies/games etc. Get a name, then find out from there how to get into it. Read the rules on how not to get into leecher status almost immediately once you get in. Once you get your foot into an easier tracker that at least has some content you’re into, then make your way up if you want more.

    neo,
    @neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space avatar

    On the other hand, if you can interview for and get into RED, that’s a strong signal that you can make in in the realm of private trackers.

    Appoxo,
    @Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Yes. you just need to visit an open invite forum/thread like on reddit or on the interwebz.
    Keyword: Open Signup

    akilou,

    Pm me and I’ll send you an invite

    splendoruranium,

    I strongly disapprove of private trackers. I’m forced to take part in some only because the content isn’t available anywhere else. And the private trackers generally forbid re-sharing their content on public trackers, which unnecessarily gatekeeps the content and perpetuates the problem.
    If it doen’t help to make everything accessible to everybody then it’s not a valuable part of the sharing ecosystem.

    athos77,

    Do they forbid sharing the content, or do they forbid sharing the torrents? If it's just the torrents, you can just create a public torrent with a different piece size and cross seed.

    splendoruranium,

    It’s the content, presumably in order to maintain exclusivity of the little private club. That’s part of the problem, I suppose. Private trackers aren’t just an anonymous one-stop supermarket like some public trackers, they’re often small personal hangouts, actual communities. In of itself that sounds great, but it always carries the danger of content being held hostage for what - at least in my eyes - amounts to pointless, snobby elitism.

    WarmApplePieShrek,

    The torrents, because they mess up tracker stats. Just change the source parameter so the infohash changes, and remove private=1 if you’re going to post on a public tracker.

    neo,
    @neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space avatar

    The torrents.

    ANIMATEK, (edited )

    Most trackers are fine with you sharing their content. Heck, most trackers don’t even produce most of their content.

    But let’s suppose they do. If you wanna share it, they cannot ever trace it back to your account, unless you are dumb and use the same username or something, but even then you can argue that it wasn’t you.

    neo,
    @neo@lemmy.comfysnug.space avatar

    No, they forbid you sharing their TORRENTS, not their CONTENT.

    mateomaui,

    Public, because I’m a lazy bitch leecher with a mobile data cap.

    Bear_with_a_hammer,

    I have 50mbits, I use public ones, and I seed, yes people we exist, and we are many. 😁

    java, (edited )

    I can’t bother joining a private tracker. Of course, they might be useful for niche content. For instance, 15 years ago there was a special tracker, where people shared races of virtually all racing series. But mainstream stuff is available on public trackers.

    There one tracker where I download lossless music. But anyone can join it, I guess you could define it as semi-private or semi-public.

    Dwalin,

    I’m interested in the lossless music tracker. Which one is it?

    java,

    rutracker.org, e.g. rutracker.org/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3494796

    The interface is in Russian, but it’s not that hard to translate a couple of words to navigate. Apparently, you don’t even have to be registered to download anymore.

    https://i.imgur.com/u99vxb3.png

    berg,

    Private, I like sharing in a community. Particularly like the Nordic one I’m in, they make sure everything has nice subs. There’s also a few quirky torrents on there, like a collection of very old and niche Swedish PC games, many of which I remember fondly from when I was young.

    vildis,

    What’s the proportions of Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and Danish content on there? I’ve been trying to get into some more private trackers apart from MAM and TL

    berg,

    I couldn’t tell you really since I’m only looking for one of them. But I think it’s predominantly Swedish, or maybe it’s just bias. 😄

    eating3645,

    If you permaseed you don’t need to know individual tracker seeing requirements.

    Leax,

    How many torrents are you usually sharing at the same time? I find it affects my Internet speed at some point, even if I limit the upload rate…

    eating3645,

    Not many. I prefer smaller trackers though. If you see a lot of popular torrents on larger trackers, you’ll have a bunch of concurrent active seeds.

    SexualPolytope,
    @SexualPolytope@lemmy.sdf.org avatar

    I can’t permaseed for tv shows due to storage limits, so I use autoremove-torrents to automatically delete stuff based on the tracker.

    canis_majoris,
    @canis_majoris@lemmy.ca avatar

    I am on a few private trackers but they don’t offer anything that the public trackers don’t already have covered for my use case, outside of porn.

    I am more of a DDL pirate anyways. I have a seedbox for torrents but I tend to stick to mega links, even if there is a slight delay in getting the media. Typically what I find is that all the re-encoded high resolution h265 content comes later and is more abundant on the mega link forums than on trackers; most trackers will have h264 copies at 720/1080, but they’re often larger than the h265 high resolution re-encodes.

    SchizoDenji,

    Unless the h264 files extra audio tracks, you’re downloading lower quality (bitrate) stuff.

    canis_majoris,
    @canis_majoris@lemmy.ca avatar

    The lower bitrate is fine because I’m usually streaming off the local network, so keeping the file sizes down is pretty beneficial.

    CriticalMiss, (edited )

    I’m the occasional pirate, I don’t download more media than I watch and therefore never saw the appeal of private trackers. They have their perks, no doubt, but most of what I need can be found on the internet.

    SchizoDenji,

    If you only watch English content, 100%. But if you are into foreign language stuff then private trackers do have some scene releases that aren’t available on public ones.

    CriticalMiss,

    I rarely watch anything in my native languages, the content we produce is bad, so I never needed anything beyond what public trackers offer and very rarely subtitles.

    UnRelatedBurner, (edited )

    private all the way, only public Torrent that I seed is the Arch ISO.

    imo it offers better security, anonimity, and possibly acts as a dummy filter, as uploads get checked. I also like my rank that I get when I’m actively seeding a bunch c:

    narc0tic_bird,

    Not sure how it provides better anonymity when all your activity is linked to your account. Should this account somehow be linked to you, a malicious actor would know everything you (potentially ever) downloaded.

    UnRelatedBurner,

    You are right, I was thinking about randos. When I pub torrent an agent can just log all the IPs and I’m fked, when it’s private it should be free of these people. I get that it probably isn’t but, nothing is perfect.

    CalicoJack,

    I prefer private, but only a few that aren’t to crazy with the rules. Ratio is easy enough to maintain with some freeleech torrents set to seed forever, all other torrents get set to whatever the minimum seed requirements are. The selection, quality, and speed are so much better that I don’t mind putting in that little bit of effort. Public trackers are my last resort.

    That said, any torrents are secondary to Usenet. That subscription is worth every damn penny.

    Vendetta9076,
    @Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works avatar

    Right on brother

    Crow, (edited )
    @Crow@lemmy.world avatar

    I actually can’t find the stuff I want that’s missing on public trackers on private ones, so they’re pointless to me.

    Edit: Looking for HD middle seasons of Reno911.

    lksaar,

    TVV has S01-S06 in 1080p avc, and TL has a S01-S08 1080p in hevc

    GlitzyArmrest,
    @GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world avatar

    Private is so much better, availability and speed wise. For most, as long as you build ratio with freeleech torrents, you’re fine.

    K0W4LSK1,
    @K0W4LSK1@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

    Freeleech is my ratio lifeblood lmao

    Knuk,

    I haven’t had to get a torrent out of freeleech except for an ebook and now I’ve got a ratio in the millions

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