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.

  • GingeyBook@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    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?

    • Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

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

    • SEND_NOODLES_PLS@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • boooooboo@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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 (he/him)A
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          1 year ago

          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.

      • rambos@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

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

  • splendoruranium@infosec.pub
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    1 year ago

    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@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      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@infosec.pub
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        1 year ago

        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@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • ANIMATEK@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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 (he/him)A
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      1 year ago

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

  • GlitzyArmrest@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

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

  • UnRelatedBurner@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    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@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        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.

  • CriticalMiss@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      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@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

  • Type 1 [Missouri]@midwest.social
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    1 year ago

    I’ve applied for half-a-dozen private trackers, but they’ve all turned me down. Definitely seems counter to the entire idea of piracy IMO.

  • skele_tron@feddit.de
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    1 year ago

    I used to want to get in on some private trackers, esp cult movie related ( karagarga ) but was always put off by elitism of those rules and systems.

    Instead i opted to upload to pirate bay and like a trve pirate - no questions asked, download what you will - seeded some very obscure movies that i collected. Had to pull the plug after more than 10 yrs because i was emigrating, was a good time.

  • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    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@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

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

      • smoothbrain coldtakes@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

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

  • ѕєχυαℓ ρσℓутσρє@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    I’m kinda in the same boat, except for a specific private tracker. It’s a local private tracker which has a ton of exclusive stuff in my native language, and most of the users also speak it so there’s a communal aspect to it. But otherwise, yeah. I also tend to prefer public trackers, especially for more mainstream stuff.

  • Crow@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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.

  • athos77@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The newbie blues for each private tracker are a definite thing, but once you get past that it’s great. It also depends on which trackers you’re on: the general trackers tend to have similar content as publics, but it’s the specialty and niche trackers where privates really shine.