After rarbg went down, I got into a private torrent site. They expect everyone to maintain a certain ratio, which is reasonable, but there is actually no way to build ratio. The seed-to-download ratio is ridiculously high for all of the popular torrents, and new users aren’t allowed to post their own torrents. (As a sidebar, normies seem to run the Internet now, so all of the most recent torrent offerings are bad network TV shows, Marvel movies, or equally unwatchable fare).

When I was on Demonoid during its heyday ~20ish years ago, the standard way to build ratio was to offer something for download that nobody has, allowing your ratio to grow by uploading to the first few initial seeders.

This is not possible anymore, at least on this private site. Is this normal, or is this private torrent site just stupid?

  • hugz@lemmy.mlEnglish
    4·
    2 years ago

    Usually there’ll be freeleech files or freeleech days etc. This alows you to download without affecting your ratio.

    Download a heap of freeleech content ans seed it 24/7. I was on a porn tracker and downloaded a few 20gb site-rips on freeleech. If 5 people download the full site off me, that’s 100gb of ratio.

    Try download some big files that you’ll be one of the few seeds of after a while. If you only download content with 2000 seeders then you’ll never get a good ratio, but if you can download some full TV series on freeleech then people will occaisionally want to watch the show and you can seed it to them

    • ThrowsArrows@sopuli.xyzEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago

      This is the way, grab the freeleeches and seed. Back when I was building ratio I would do this on a Seedbox, now a days I do it myself as my bandwidth has greatly improved

  • Landor Dragen@lemmy.mlEnglish
    4·
    2 years ago

    Just a question: why private trackers? Do you need any specific content that you can’t find anywhere else?

    • vehemenz@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      1·
      2 years ago
      1. Yes
      2. I don’t have high hopes for public trackers in the future
      3. I don’t need to use VPN, can port forward
    • Bazrid@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      01·
      2 years ago

      Private trackers you won’t have to worry about fake torrents / malware / letters from your ISP telling you stealing is bad.

  • Entropy@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    Seeding, but not uploading earns bonus points. Bonus points buy upload credit, so all you need to do to is not delete the torrent from your client and you’ll earn BP.

  • Elghoto@beehaw.orgEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    Typically, ratio private trackers have bonus point systems that you can exchange for free leeches or upload data. Read the rules for bonus points. You can maximize your points by being smart with your downloads. Downloading small torrents that are old, free leech huge torrents, torrents dying, etc. Depends on the tracker.

    If they don’t have bonus points, trackers also offer free leeches…that you need to snatch asap…if you download those everything you upload goes to your buffer.

    I’ve been in many trackers and made TBs of upload data without having a seed box or uploading new torrents. It’s just a little patience and then you’ll be able to download whatever.

    • vehemenz@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      2·
      2 years ago

      Outside seeding might work. Basically, download the same release from another site, then seed as if I downloaded it from my private tracker, right?

      Still, it would have to be something popular, and all of those torrents have a gazillion seeders (and zero downloaders) already. But I suppose after enough time… sigh.

      • Slayer 🦊@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        I’d tread careful with that one. Depending on the tracker it could get you banned. And being banned with one private tracker can get you banned on multiple

      • Bucket_of_Truth@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        2 years ago

        Back in the what.cd days I got started by just buying albums on the bounty page.

        The quickest way is to get a seedbox and write a script to download new releases from the tracker. I built up a few TB of upload credit when Game of Thrones was at its peak by downloading episode torrents minutes after they were released.

  • Damaniel@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    I guess it depends on the tracker. The only private tracker I ever used was actually for arcade and video game ROMs (PleasureDome), and they structured things so that their most popular torrents (MAME sets) were free to leech but contributed to the upload side of ratio (so you could download the entire thing for ‘free’, but that download didn’t count against your ratio requirement, and you could build ratio by seeding it). It generally worked - at least most of the time, but unless you had a seedbox, a VPN with port forwarding or exposed ports for BitTorrent, you weren’t likely to build up much ratio on other torrents.

    I don’t use torrents much anymore (I’m pretty much in the Usenet camp these days), but I wouldn’t really do it seriously unless I paid for a seedbox.

  • danteScanline@lemmy.fmhy.mlEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    on my private tracker you get points for just always seeding, you can turn those points in for ratios boosts at a pretty good rate.

  • Bleeping Lobster@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    It’s frustrating. I’m on an invite-only MMA tracker, and it’s pretty much impossible to maintain ratio because instead of just uploading a 480 / 720 / 1080 for each event, we end up with 20 different uploads as everyone tries to get as much seeding themselves as possible.

    The result of that is, without becoming an uploader your ratio just drops and drops. Which of course further incentivises fracturing of a single source into 20 pointless reuploads.