3 ms·

Torrent is still very centralized. The average user just downloads and seeds torrents made by a few torrent curators on each site. Becoming an uploader on a tor

Torrent is still very centralized. The average user just downloads and seeds torrents made by a few torrent curators on each site. Becoming an uploader on a torrent site is a big privilege/responsibility that few people can take on. Other older platforms like Napster or DC++ (which actually still exists) let people share their own collection at the click of a button. This gave access to a really really long tail of rarities that perhaps only a handful of people were interested in, while torrent sites are mostly mainstream content.

dewey 7y ago
> Becoming an uploader on a torrent site What do you mean by that? You can upload your torrents to any of the big public torrent sites and if it's a private site just being a member allows you to upload already. Public trackers are also all using DHT which makes this not centralized.
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  On private sites I know (in Hungary), being an uploader is a privilege one must earn, by being around for some time, earning the trust of the admins, having good uplink, learning all the rules and formats so all torrents are consistent etc. I guess perhaps about 0.1% of members upload stuff to these trackers. The situation may be different elsewhere. Context: Torrent is hugely popular in Hungary, basically everyone is a member who uses the internet under ~40 years and is even remotely technical, which means more than a million people (with the single most popular site having over 700k members, with account sharing explicitly allowed). Perhaps not so much for the newest teenager generation (I don't know). Until very recently (and still now) streaming services have been limited contentwise and people just cannot afford to buy all the movies, songs, games etc. with the same ease as in Western Europe / North America.

3 ms·

Torrent is still very centralized. The average user just downloads and seeds torrents made by a few torrent curators on each site. Becoming an uploader on a tor

by bonoboTP 7y ago

dewey 7y ago
> Becoming an uploader on a torrent site What do you mean by that? You can upload your torrents to any of the big public torrent sites and if it's a private site just being a member allows you to upload already. Public trackers are also all using DHT which makes this not centralized.
- bonoboTP 7y ago
  On private sites I know (in Hungary), being an uploader is a privilege one must earn, by being around for some time, earning the trust of the admins, having good uplink, learning all the rules and formats so all torrents are consistent etc. I guess perhaps about 0.1% of members upload stuff to these trackers. The situation may be different elsewhere. Context: Torrent is hugely popular in Hungary, basically everyone is a member who uses the internet under ~40 years and is even remotely technical, which means more than a million people (with the single most popular site having over 700k members, with account sharing explicitly allowed). Perhaps not so much for the newest teenager generation (I don't know). Until very recently (and still now) streaming services have been limited contentwise and people just cannot afford to buy all the movies, songs, games etc. with the same ease as in Western Europe / North America.