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Do you prefer private or public trackers? (lemmy.one)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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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.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months 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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months 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.