Private trackers see your ratio because your client tells it to them. If you cheat, you get banned. They can tell you cheat because the seeder reports upload but you don't report download. You must not use private tracker torrents except on their tracker because it looks like cheating because the other client isn't connected to their tracker, and you will get banned.

[–] ohitsbreadley@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Maybe I'm a smooth brain - but I always thought private trackers were kept private/exclusive as a way of promoting seeding - the exclusivity of private trackers lowers risk/fear of seeding, so people seed, files are kept alive. - the ratios are a stick to enforce the rules and boot leechers. Centralizing seed logs with private trackers always gave me the creeps though.

Honestly, it sounds like there's essentially no risk of seeding on I2P. Wouldn't more people be willing to seed in general? And wouldn't that in turn obviate the need for private trackers?

Alas, perhaps my smooth brain brings naivety along with it.

[–] Strict3443@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago

This is a good point. I also feel like private trackers are meant for people who actually seed content they download, and just have good intentions to help share content. This also comes with hardware requirements (disk space) sometimes that not everyone has.