I feel this way too, and the only people I've ever seen talk about private trackers have always had a weird chip on their shoulder. It has very "secret club" vibes. I know the stuff on public trackers only comes out because of scene leaks, but the scene wouldn't vanish if there weren't any more private trackers. Bittorrent was made for widespread public sharing without risk of censorship or takedowns, you don't need to keep it hushed, it's already protected against that. So private trackers have always just seemed like social clubs to me (I mean that in a bad way)

[–] viking@infosec.pub 8 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Yep, that and the fact that private trackers have buy-in or subscription fees and mandatory upload ratios.

I value the anonymity of a public tracker that doesn't tie me down with any means of fund transfer or prolonged upload through which I could be exposed if my VPN dropped or the payment channel got compromised, crypto or not.

[–] WarmApplePieShrek@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 8 months ago

The ones that cost money aren't worth using.

[–] ctkatz@lemmy.ml 9 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I would and for the most part have used private trackers for either a specific type of thing or a specific kinda obscure or not very popular title. I find that the more not well known a thing is, the more likely it's going to be found and (re)seeded on a private tracker.

[–] blindsight@beehaw.org 4 points 8 months ago

Exactly my experience. I'm in a private tracker for books and audiobooks that sometimes has content that's not on other sites (audiobooks, in particular).

I also just joined a different private tracker that specializes in pre-organized .img files pre-loaded for emulation setups. Like, a one-file 1TB image ready to roll with everything preconfigured.

For popular TV/film, private trackers are unnecessary, unless maybe you're very particular about 4K/8K REMUX quality or something more specific.