5 ms·

This is not correct, swarms on good private sites are way better than on public trackers. With real world torrent clients, you’d much rather have a swarm with

This is not correct, swarms on good private sites are way better than on public trackers. With real world torrent clients, you’d much rather have a swarm with 100 dedicated servers on 1gbps+ connections than a swarm with a million Indian residential connections.

Manuel_D 4y ago
Sure, but why not have 100 dedicated servers and a million residential connections? Potential upload bandwidth is strictly larger.
- lfodofod 4y ago
  Because your torrent client will never find those dedicated servers, and instead wastes all of it’s connection slots on the Indian residential connections. Also because there’s no incentive for anybody to seed public tracker content on servers. Your host will get abuse reports and you will not be rewarded in any way, on private sites you won’t receive abuse reports and you have to seed in order to maintain access.
- luckylion 4y ago
  Public trackers are the slums where people shit in the streets. You don't want to walk there and look for the things you want. Private trackers are the communal libraries where enthusiasts work hard to improve the collective archives. They sort out the people who cannot behave and the whole experience is a lot better: rules regarding organization and filenames etc are being followed, tags are added so that you can search efficiently, requests are filled, quality is ensured, holes are plugged, people don't upload duplicates, you'll find help and exchange in forums about the tracker's topic etc etc, all because it's a private club which includes the possibility that your membership ends if you pee into the kitchen.
  - Manuel_D 4y ago
    > communal libraries where enthusiasts No, it's private libraries closed to the broader community. The millions of Indians in the aforementioned comment are precisely the people who'd benefit most from free flow of information, but they're excluded. This is like setting up a premium subscription library to keep poor people out - the "slums" are precisely the people who benefit from a public library the most. Tagging and removal of duplicates can be done without making a tracker private. Public torrents have been plenty fast enough for me, I'm not sure why people are complaining. Maybe they're not sophisticated enough to up the connection limits on their torrent software, which is why slow peers are hampering their speeds.
    - lfodofod 4y ago
      > This is like setting up a premium subscription library to keep poor people out - the "slums" are precisely the people who benefit from a public library the most With those people come automated abuse reports and law firms trying to collect money from downloaders. > Public torrents have been plenty fast enough for me, I'm not sure why people are complaining. Maybe they're not sophisticated enough to up the connection limits on their torrent software, which is why slow peers are hampering their speeds. Are you using a gigabit connection? If not, it’s not too surprising that you would not notice this.
      - brnt 4y ago
        With private trackers, aren't you also 1 suuccesful penetration or website breach away from exposing your history?
        lfodofod 4y ago
        Private trackers are small, uninteresting targets. Even the big private trackers have less users in total than you can find in individual public swarms.
    - luckylion 4y ago
      "Community" means different things to different people. Your definition seems to include every human on earth, I don't. > This is like setting up a premium subscription library to keep poor people out No, it's not. The content is still redistributed to the public trackers. It just avoids the American idea that public libraries should also be homeless shelters. > Tagging and removal of duplicates can be done without making a tracker private. You'd have to massively increase moderation, and you'd constantly remove and change torrents which would disrupt the swarm. It's not useful. > Public torrents have been plenty fast enough for me I don't care about the speed. I care about the quality.
  - dmitryminkovsky 4y ago
    So how do we reason about rutracker, a site not as glorious as some of the true private trackers, but certainly not a slum like many of the public trackers?
    - luckylion 4y ago
      The same way we'd speak about PLAB: runet is different. I don't know why, maybe it's the language barrier and relying on google translate is enough of a resistance so the english-speaking masses go elsewhere.
      - dmitryminkovsky 4y ago
        Not sure what PLAB is...?
        lfodofod 4y ago
        presumably pornolab

Manuel_D 4y ago

Sure, but why not have 100 dedicated servers and a million residential connections? Potential upload bandwidth is strictly larger.

lfodofod 4y ago
Because your torrent client will never find those dedicated servers, and instead wastes all of it’s connection slots on the Indian residential connections. Also because there’s no incentive for anybody to seed public tracker content on servers. Your host will get abuse reports and you will not be rewarded in any way, on private sites you won’t receive abuse reports and you have to seed in order to maintain access.
luckylion 4y ago
Public trackers are the slums where people shit in the streets. You don't want to walk there and look for the things you want. Private trackers are the communal libraries where enthusiasts work hard to improve the collective archives. They sort out the people who cannot behave and the whole experience is a lot better: rules regarding organization and filenames etc are being followed, tags are added so that you can search efficiently, requests are filled, quality is ensured, holes are plugged, people don't upload duplicates, you'll find help and exchange in forums about the tracker's topic etc etc, all because it's a private club which includes the possibility that your membership ends if you pee into the kitchen.
- Manuel_D 4y ago
  > communal libraries where enthusiasts No, it's private libraries closed to the broader community. The millions of Indians in the aforementioned comment are precisely the people who'd benefit most from free flow of information, but they're excluded. This is like setting up a premium subscription library to keep poor people out - the "slums" are precisely the people who benefit from a public library the most. Tagging and removal of duplicates can be done without making a tracker private. Public torrents have been plenty fast enough for me, I'm not sure why people are complaining. Maybe they're not sophisticated enough to up the connection limits on their torrent software, which is why slow peers are hampering their speeds.
  - lfodofod 4y ago
    > This is like setting up a premium subscription library to keep poor people out - the "slums" are precisely the people who benefit from a public library the most With those people come automated abuse reports and law firms trying to collect money from downloaders. > Public torrents have been plenty fast enough for me, I'm not sure why people are complaining. Maybe they're not sophisticated enough to up the connection limits on their torrent software, which is why slow peers are hampering their speeds. Are you using a gigabit connection? If not, it’s not too surprising that you would not notice this.
    - brnt 4y ago
      With private trackers, aren't you also 1 suuccesful penetration or website breach away from exposing your history?
      - lfodofod 4y ago
        Private trackers are small, uninteresting targets. Even the big private trackers have less users in total than you can find in individual public swarms.
  - luckylion 4y ago
    "Community" means different things to different people. Your definition seems to include every human on earth, I don't. > This is like setting up a premium subscription library to keep poor people out No, it's not. The content is still redistributed to the public trackers. It just avoids the American idea that public libraries should also be homeless shelters. > Tagging and removal of duplicates can be done without making a tracker private. You'd have to massively increase moderation, and you'd constantly remove and change torrents which would disrupt the swarm. It's not useful. > Public torrents have been plenty fast enough for me I don't care about the speed. I care about the quality.
- dmitryminkovsky 4y ago
  So how do we reason about rutracker, a site not as glorious as some of the true private trackers, but certainly not a slum like many of the public trackers?
  - luckylion 4y ago
    The same way we'd speak about PLAB: runet is different. I don't know why, maybe it's the language barrier and relying on google translate is enough of a resistance so the english-speaking masses go elsewhere.
    - dmitryminkovsky 4y ago
      Not sure what PLAB is...?
      - lfodofod 4y ago
        presumably pornolab