If you are too lazy to join private trackers, at least use TraSH guides to set up quality profiles
In practice, it's just adding an API key, setting a rule in the app to remove after x and then you can go back to ignoring it.
TBF this isn’t a revival of some arch 90s thing, this is just how private trackers have been. What was the same in the aughts, for instance.
That's why they called private? Nice thing about private trackers is that you can just download without VPN (with DHT off...). Downside of private trackers, you get banned for weirdest thing, like my seed box was offline while I was out of country on vacation, I didn't download or seed anything for two weeks and got banned. Newsgroups are much better.
If you are too old for trackers, then just sign up for usenet. You will have to pay for it though.
flaresolverr even had an open issue or similar that acknowledges it's basically dead last I checked?
And thus, it's not completely unmoderated, nor full of malware.
This can get stupid sometimes like when they're expecting everybody to keep over 1.0 when there are people with 10.0; but usually when they're doing that it's because it's a scammy tracker (all private trackers that you have to pay to join are scammy no exceptions) and they're trying to extort people who fall below 1.0 to give them money.
But expecting people to upload is part of the deal. That's not about being old, that's about being selfish. Non-scammy private trackers make it very easy, and some just concentrate on gatekeeping and don't worry about ratios at all.
Your basic point is very true, though. The way many private trackers have lasted is to stop letting people in almost entirely. To get into a non-scammy tracker you have to know somebody irl who is on and active, and they still might not be able to get you in. Or they will pretend like they can't - inviters sometimes get punished for the quality of the people they invite, and you think sharing back is something children do.
Why lol? Still better value than paying the IP holder what they want. And maintaining well curated torrent platforms costs money.
There are zero good private trackers that you can pay for to enter. Buying invites will get you banned, and paying the site directly is only possible on scummy trackers.
There is a lot of good information here [0]. Most notably RED is open via interviews conducted on IRC, and has a big invite forum to join other trackers. But yes, they do force you to contribute through maintaining your ratio.
But isn't this sort of structure just completely transparent to [Nation|Narco]/State Actors? Feel free to widen the set of economically interested actors.
How do you scale video interviews?
I think I am missing something about this scene. I really want to dive in tho.
the point is, some trackers don't even take these one-time payments for themselves and still provide service on the level as if you pay tenfold of that, monthly, to them.
My setup is optimised for being quiet and low power, and part of that means bulk HDD storage that is mostly spun down. Seeding a large long tail of data would probably mean a lot more disk activity.
Meanwhile, I joined my first private tracker 3 years ago, and now I am in all of them (ptp, btn, etc). I do not have to worry about the ratios (cross-seed is set and forget), and after awhile you have more "upload" and "ratio" then you need for a lifetime. I barely have to seed anymore. I log in once in a while, but otherwise do not have to participate in the communities, and the selection is awesome (they basically have everything, even Mexican B movies from the 1940s, whatever floats your boat). They saturate my fiber when I download too.
But do keep complaining and arguing, you will feel better.