Private trackers

[Admin]

The issue with thepiratebay is that often they do not have what you are actually looking for or nobody is seeding it anymore.

Often the only way to get your hands on more nieche content is to download it via some private tracker. You might not even be able to buy it legally.

https://wiki.installgentoo.com/index.php/Private_trackers

 

[Admin]

How to gain access to good private trackers
Once you have become member of a good private tracker and advance there you might get invited to other private trackers.

So how do you get into private trackers in the first place? well some of them have an interview system.

https://interviewfor.red/en/index.html

https://interview.orpheus.network/

RED is very much a better option when starting out and it is worth the extra effort it takes to join them over joining OPS.

I did pass the interview for RED at my first attempt but that was after reading the website and already knowing a lot about audio. The hard part was actually getting an interview time and not missing it, you can get as little as slightly more than 20 minutes to reply when you get notified on your IRC client. Note that being say #12 does not mean you are not going to get time for interview without warning in 30 minutes, they typically do more than one at once.

Note that you should obviously not visit the interview website after the interview has started since that would be cheating, they almost certaintly logs the ip adresses for visitors so they see if you connect to it for any reason during the interview.

And obviously try to read and understand what they are actually telling you regarding audio, this is basic stuff you should learn regardless for the most part.

 

[Admin]

How to avoid getting banned
Obviously read and follow the rules and do not try to cheat them.

It might be best not to invite anyone at all since that's only a liability, instead refer your friends to the interview site. Staff may use collective punishments against especially bad actors so it's better to be independent with your account.

Do not visit any invite trading site without using at least tor + proxy since letting those people see your ip would be a liability. You also need to use a different browser obviously (preferably different computer altogether)

https://archive.fo/8koAG

Be careful with regard to the forums and IRC channels. Do not point out to authority figures there how they are wrong. The issue is that if you make some staff upset by posting something on a forum you might get banned resulting in you no longer being able to download music you love for example, it's not worth it.

You are there to download content primarily.

Probably best to avoid anything remotely political though and sensitive topics in general.

Main upside i can see with being active on forums is you then getting invited to some other site by someone but that would only grant you an unofficial invite which is inferior to an invite from official channel (such as on forums restricted to certain user classes).

 

[Admin]

On being /pure/ and avoiding treebans
Your account is /pure/ when you have only been invited to trackers via official channels, such as staff-run applications, or official recruiting threads. Staff will virtually never treeban an official recruiter since it would wipe out too many innocent users along with them. The benefit of being /pure/ is the assured knowledge your account is safe today and ten years from now. Remember that once you are in someone's tree you are in it forever, you have no control over the other people they invite, or who those people invite. Your inviter might be a good dude, but if he invites someone who sells accounts you are now in a poisoned tree. Being /pure/ is not always easy.

• Official recruiting requirements might be high.
• You might get an invite way faster from a buddy, this can be a good idea if you know and truly trust this person not to give out user invites willy nilly. You can sidestep potentially years of pyramid climbing if you have a friend in the right place who you can trust implicitly.
• Some trackers don't have official recruiting at all. TVV, for example. Joining these trackers doesn't really affect your accounts' /pure/ status as they are generally not cabal associated. Obviously, you can still get in some trouble if the wrong person invites you, just be prudent with how you get your invites.
• Some trackers are in no way associated with the cabal, so being /impure/ doesn't matter. IPT is an example of this.

Often with treebans they start out by disabling all accounts in the tree and then you will have to talk to them on IRC hoping they will re-enable your account. Personally i wouldn't even bother with that for users who haven't really contributed to the site, they can stay banned forever.

https://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/1exjnf3/treebans_are_justified_and_probably_necessary/

 

[Admin]

The cabal
Many private trackers work together to get rid of problematic users. If you do something viewed as very bad (such as invite trading) on one site you will end up getting banned on other sites as well once you get caught (or prevented from ever joining if you do do not yet have account on any of these sites).

The leading trackers of the cabal are:

https://redacted.ch
https://broadcasthe.net/
https://passthepopcorn.me/
https://hdbits.org

Sites lower in the hierarchy are:

https://karagarga.in/
https://gazellegames.net/
https://bibliotik.me/
https://animebytes.tv/
https://orpheus.network/
https://beyond-hd.me/
https://www.cinematik.net/
https://www.pixelcove.me/
https://www.empornium.is/
https://revolutiontt.me
https://www.morethantv.me/
https://secret-cinema.pw/
https://animetorrents.me/
https://filelist.io

 

[Admin]

private trackers suck ass.

like the pureTnA site from years ago.

the members always bitch to other people

and neg them to seed, and brag about their retarded seed ratios.

That particular site being bad does not mean that all are bad.

For some material private trackers is literally your only realistic option got getting it.

Of course there are significant hurdles to actually use them, not only to get an account in the first place but also to maintain that (can be difficult to keep a good ratio).

Also: You don't have to use the forums in the first place. You can simply download what you need and upload enough to hold the ratio.

 

[Admin]

People are not being rewarded enough for uploading new content
While the first seeder will be at an advantage what tends to happen on sites such as redacted.ch is seedboxes autosnatching the new uploads resulting in the original uploader benefiting less from it than the seedbox who had the best bandwidth, etc.

Note that having new content be autosnatched is actually a good thing in itself. The issue is that there isn't any good mechanism in which uploaders of new content are compensated, sometimes there are bounties but typically there isn't.

One very obvious solution is to give some bigger rewards to the original uploader such as 10% the traffic. this can be capped to 10 times the size of the uploaded files. You can also have a fixed compensation just to incentivize archiving (after it has been fully seeded by at least 1 person for 30 days, doesn't matter who).

 

[Admin]

Imagine risking your account for 5 freeleech tokens
On redacted.ch you get 5 freelech tokens if you invite someone that reaches "Elite Torrent Master". Reaching that takes a lot of work since it requires you to

• Upload 500 GiB
• Upload 500 "perfect flac" torrents.
• Have ratio above 0.65 (will then get demoted if it falls below 0.6)
• Uploaded at least 500 "unique groups" (albums basically).

The freeleech tokens are not actually that valuable since they are limited to 2GiB torrents (or less) and cannot be used at all for larger torrents.

 

[Admin]

Waiting for freeleech vs downloading right away
Since a tracker might ban you, remove the torrent or just shut down it makes sense to get stuff you really want right away and only wait for freeleech for hit and miss content (such as downloading music only because it being 24 bit and 192 KS/s).

You can keep a "wait for freeleech" list on your computer but maybe if it's notable enough to be put on a list you should just download it right away?

 

[Admin]

Which private trackers are even worth joining in the first place?
A lot of private trackers don't even offer that much in terms of content.

https://hdvinnie.github.io/Private-Trackers-Spreadsheet/

Redacted.ch has by far the most torrents, of course many of these are different formats of the same song but that's actually a good thing (except for the mp3 uploads nobody wants). Despite being limited to basically just music it has more torrent than any general private tracker.

Lower tier tracker also tends to be bad in other ways such as annoying H&R rules and having to pay for immunity from inactivity pruning (if they give it at all).

RED: 9 / 10
GGn: 8.1 / 10
AB: 8 / 10
OPS: 6 / 10
EMP: 4 / 10
Milkie: 3.4 / 10
FL: 3.2 / 10
DCC: 3 / 10
Happyfappy: 2 / 10

 

[Admin]

Maintaining a good ratio at redacted.ch isn't hard
Right now they have a "freeload" event that will last until januari 31 (UTC). That means that you can download loads of stuff without having it affect your ratio.

Use this opportunity to grab loads of files to seed. If you find one track you like just grab the entire album (including extras) since the upload will start count once the freeload event is over.

They also provide you with freeleech tokens that can be used for torrent up to 2GiB in size. Even if you do have a freeleech token it might stiill make sense to just download regularly if the torrent is of small size since you get more for your token in terms of not having download credited if you use it for larger torrents (ideally exactly 2GiB but 800MiB+ is fine).

You can rip CDs to get some increase your upload stats but that's not the most time effective method. There is a much quicker method that does not require you to have possess any physical media or pre-own any music at all. You can search for 24-bit releases and then use sox.

They allow each of the following to be uploaded for reach release

24/192 xor 24/176.4
24/96 xor 24/88.2
16/48 xor 16/44.1

downsample to 16/44.1:

mkdir converted; for flac in *.[Ff][Ll][Aa][Cc]; do sox -S "$flac" -R -G -b 16 converted/"$flac" rate -v -L 44100 dither; done

downsample to 16/48:

mkdir converted; for flac in *.[Ff][Ll][Aa][Cc]; do sox -S "$flac" -R -G -b 16 converted/"$flac" rate -v -L 48000 dither; done

downsample to 24/88.2 for 24/176.4 releases:

mkdir converted; for flac in *.[Ff][Ll][Aa][Cc]; do sox -S "$flac" -R -G converted/"$flac" rate -v -L 88200; done

Resample to 24/96 for 24/192 sources:

mkdir converted; for flac in *.[Ff][Ll][Aa][Cc]; do sox -S "$flac" -R -G converted/"$flac" rate -v -L 96000; done

This is by far the most popular format, very likely to get snatched at least once quickly.

Uploads to 24/48 or 24/44.1 are only allowed if it was originally released as that and then you can also upload a 16 bit version i think.

Dither to 16-bit without resampling:

mkdir converted; for flac in *.[Ff][Ll][Aa][Cc]; do sox -S "$flac" -R -G -b 16 converted/"$flac" dither; done

Note that while they do suggest downsampling 24/96 to 16/48 the more popular format might actually be 16/44.1 so you might get more snatches if you upload as 16/44.1

 

[Admin]

You don't need a seedbox unless you have bad internet
Of course you should get good internet (upload above 10 MiB/s ideally) since otherwise you will have to pay for a seexbox which costs more than upgrading to better internet generally.

You can also of course just temporarily rent a seedbox if you need to boost your ratio for a while but if you are smart about it there should be no need for that.

People getting seedboxes seems like a pointless armsrace a lot of the time, people getting better and better upload speeds to compete against each other.

 

[Admin]

Stuff that has annoyed me with redacted.ch
First off the process for getting interviewed is very frustrating, they only did interviews around 3 times a week when i was trying to become a member and it might occur at a time where you are away from the computer or simply doing something else (i should have set up some sound notification for IRC but now i am a member so no need anymore).

Still better than getting inviting and risking treeban.

The problem here is that a lot of people who could contribute to the community will give up before they even reach the interview stage due to not having time to wait for days hoping to get to the interview.

The freeload while good for me did annoy me in seeing upload not get counted for that which makes it feel pointless to seed (especially when it's pretty hard to get upload even with 100/100 internet (mbps)). This might be good if you are looking to download more music but it's bad if you want to rank up to reach elite membership.

If you try to upload mp3 it will most likely sit there unsnatched forever since nobody want's that garbage. Why bother to join a private tracker only do download mp3 files? especially when the flac versions aren't even that much larger (after they stopped having a separate V2 version due to nobody downloading it).

What people actually want is cd quality and higher but here is a problem. When you upload you only specify 24bit lossless or 16bit lossless which doesn't tell users the actual sampling rates, you end up having to guess based on the file size unless the uploader tells you in a separate comment.

I am looking to improve my library of high samplerate music partly for testing purposes.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4005747/

A perhaps bigger issue is that you might download an album as "24bit lossless" only to see yet another casualty of the loadness war making half of the bits basically useless due to it hardly having any dynamic range after having been destroyed in matering, then you end up having to download some vinyl rip instead (worse fidelity than getting the studio master directly). For the most part the community there doesn't really care about that so you cannot find out by reading the comment section, you end up having to download one of the files yourself to check it in audacity (if there is no free-leech).

The freeleech tokens are annoying, you cannot use them at all for torrents larger than 2GiB and it feels like a waste so use them for CD releases that are only like 400 MiB. It distorts the economy by encouraging people to download torrents in the 1 to 2 GiB range rather than actually getting what they want (you can still use regular download for the other stuff though).

I don't see any easy way to see if you have actually downloaded a torrent, quickest method i found is to just grab the torrent file again and see if transmission notify you about a duplicate (annoying).

When you download a torrent it might say on the website that it has a seeder only to find out that there isn't actually anyone seeding it, then if you used a freeleech token it might expire without you being able to download anything.

Also the tracker has been down more often than i expected.

The library of music is good but sometimrd i just do not find what i am looking for there (i heard other sites are significantly worse in that respect though). When it came to finding metroid prime 2 music i ended up having to download from some niche website instead (where no invite was required).

The economy doesn't really reward people much who put the effort into ripping CDs (when there isn't any significant bounty). You get more upload from resampling hirez stuff (such as 24-192 to 24-96) and it still get counted as a "perfect flac" for some reason which is bullshit imo.

Anyway i doubt there is even any better alternative and i don't see myself running into ratio trouble there any time soon thanks to their freeload event that lasted to long (in addition to getting loads of freeleech tokens).

Alternatives: soulseek, rutracker, tpb.party (or some other pirate bay mirror), tidal.

 

[Georgegoobe]

Uploading to redacted.ch is way too much pain in the ass
You cannot just select the release and automatically upload the files to it. Instead you have to manually enter WEB, CD, DVD, Bluray, etc and other info.

And if the original uploader did enter incorrect info you will also have to enter the same wrong information to have it grouped together, otherwise you have to report to a mod and ask them to correct the error (and wait hours for them to fix it).

At least it will automatically fill in for you when you select "Existing edition information" but then you still have to select the correct edition and there can be multiple similar to choose from.

Usually this is not too bad luckily.

 

[Admin]

Non-cabal tracker aren't that great
I have tried trackers outside of the "cabal" several times and none of them have been particularly great.

A common problem is you not actually finding what you are looking for in addition to various shady practices such as torrentleech letting people buy membership there by subscribing to a shitty seedbox service (don't do that). Might not be worthwhile to wait for open signup if you can just get invited unofficially on some proper invite forum (such as being power user or higher on RED).

Main advantage with some of these tracker is that it's easier to maintain a good ratio there but that's only great for the freeloaders who basically never contribute anything towards the site, it's not actually great if you want to provide people with quality content (if it's also easy to join the site).

Sure you can spend the upload you earn on a request but who is going to bother to fill that if you can can easily earn hunded of GiBs in upload credit just by downloading new freeleech torrents?

happyfappy
A big problem there is that it's not good for actually finding good porn, sure you can try searching for something specific but even then chances are you are not going to find what you are looking for.

They will also automatically disable your account after 4 months of not logging in (even if you are seeding) and it does not seem like the only way to gain immunity from that is by donating to the side. Merely uploading new content to the side doesn't seem to help at all in that respect.

They will typically re-enable your account quickly the first time (you can join an irc-chat seemlessly via their website, took less than 10 minutes for me to get re-enabled) but after that you will be increasingly less likely to get it re-enabled.

This can be compared to RED and gazellegames where you get immune from inactivity-deactivation once you have been promoted 2 ranks (which is very much achievable).

h-p2p
I actually found some good stuff there but unfortunately the site is currently having a lot of trouble and it's unclear if it will ever come back online.

People on 4chan suggested https://coomer.su/ for onlyfans content

Milkie
Very easy to get membership but torrents are often poorly seeded (if seeded at all) and very often you do not find what you are looking for at all.

 

[Creamer]

we're living in the past. in the future they will have AI produce videos on the spot according to demands and what the user likes.

you would see the future better if you became more lazy.

 

[Admin]

The problem with invite paths
Sometimes in order to join via the proper official path you end up having to join some other intermediate site.

https://inviteroute.github.io/graph/

https://ti-or.github.io

https://old.reddit.com/r/TrackersInfo/wiki/official_recruitments

The big problem here is that the requirements and the site they recruiters are using will change over time.

Personally i don't plan to ever join a private tracker just for the sake of gaining access to some other tracker. Instead i will join a tracker if i am actually passionate about the content they are offering and i am able to join without having to pay any money.

It's also very common that a private tracker let's you join them directly rather than via recruitment on some other private tracker.

https://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/1eamzvt/filelist_opens_irc_recruitment/

Torrentleech doesn't seem to do any official recruitment on private trackers and i have seen people offer invites on reddit and they have had a lot of open signups in the past (but none this year unfortunately), of course it's probably safer to accept an invite posted on a more restricted place such as the RED invite forum if you are not going to wait for open signups but that's still not that great since it still ties your account to other people.

 

[Admin]

Redacted.ch vs gazellegames.net
There are different ways in which a tracker can be great and here we have 2 very good trackers that have very different approaches for how the site is run. I find myself appreciating both and i don't really want either site to change to become more like the other.

RED has by far the most torrent among any private tracker. They have an economy that very much encourages people to seed and many people also simply upload to their site in order to gain access to their invite forums. You mainly get rewarded for uploading new torrents and getting upload in general, they don't really care for things like posting in their forums or being active on their IRC server.

RED focus on what the tracker is actually for and on they one thing they focused on they did very well. They have a very good music library.

Gazellegames instead reward you for the following 6 things

points              100     200     300     450   600   800  1000

Data Uploaded:     50GB  100GiB  250GiB  500GiB  1TiB  2TiB  4TiB
Data Download:     50GB  100GiB  250GiB  500GiB  1TiB  2TiB  4TiB
Torrents uploaded:   10      25      50     100   250   500  1000
Snatched & seeded*:  25      50     100     250   500  1000  2000
IRC lines           500    1000    2500    5000  8500 14000 20000
Forum posts          50     100     250     500  1000  2500  5000

*Requires you to seed it for at least 30 days.

Immunity from inactivity pruning requires 1200 points.

Immunity from their ht and run rules requires 2100 points.

You can for example participate in the thread "Guess the Number v2 (Win Gold!)" which is actually a surprisingly enjoyable forum game, you will probably not get any gold if you win though since the person who started that hasn't been online in 3 months.

My understanding is that you could get points simply by downloading loads of small torrents and then only seed it for like 31 days, then just delete everything and start over again. They do however also have a system to encourage seeding for more than 30 days where you get gold for seeding torrents, more gold the more torrents you seed (even if nobody is actually downloading anything from you).

Basically GGn encourages people to download loads of torrents to seed since then they get gold they can use to get various buff. The entire site is intentionally set up to be like a game which is absolutely fascinating and not something i have seen anywhere else.

GGn is a lot more friendly towards people with poor upload speeds than RED.

Why the system that works for RED wouldn't work for GGn
With music the larger uploads actually provides more content so it makes sense to focus on how much someone has actually uploaded to other peers. People generally also keep seeding for years since you can directly listen to what you have downloaded.

With games however the size tells very little about how important that is, a great game can be very small in size so it would be unfair to focus too heavily on just the amount of data uploaded.

One nice thing about GGn is that they have a system where torrents that are low seeded becomes freeleech (i assume this is automated) which encourages others to grab that torrent (and hopefully actually seed it).

Uploading and interacting with mods
Sometimes when you upload new content you end up having to deal with some moderator due to something having gone wrong.

What i have found is that on RED typically it just works and there is no need to contact a mod and the uploading process is very convenient. On GGn you have to add a tag for some reason when uploading mp3 files (game sound tracks, etc).

I have so far not faced any issue interacting with mods on any private tracker.

Download speed
I do get the impression that i get higher download speed on average on RED but for the most part GGn is still just fine for me in terms of speed (using a 100 Mb/s internet connection).

It's definitely easier to get upload on GGn which is in line with me getting slightly worse download speeds there. People on RED are more likely to use seedbox which makes it harder for everyone else to get anything uploaded.

Site uptime and stability
So far for me RED has been a lot more stable and reliable but i only joined GGn recently.

Recently GGn went down in the middle of a freeleech event but luckily i had already started a lot of torrents so it kept downloading for hours at like 8 MiB/s on average, just make sure to never pause/close your torrent client, obviously do not restart your computer either and don't have any significant hardware instability.

 

[Admin]

The neon commandments
In general pretty good advice and in line with what i recommend except that i don't see any reason to invite anyone at all to any tracker, it's better if they join via the official route.

#1 Files are files. If you can get the same shit from a lesser tracker it's not more special when it comes from a cabal one. Same shit different toilet. Take advantage of this and cross seed. Not doing so is like paying $200 at Best Buy for some shit you could get at Wal-Mart for $100.

#2 Seedboxes can be great as long as you're actually getting something out of it other than just seeding shit. Stream things you don't want to download and save. Host your personal website on it (with a vhost for fuck's sake, don't be dumb.) Run ZNC. Whatever you do get your money's worth.

#3 Tracker staff are a bunch of self absorbed morons. You don't need to kiss their ass but you do need to avoid them unless you have a good reason. Like Biggie said in the Ten Crack Commandments If you ain't gettin' bagged stay the fuck from police.

#4 Use your good boy voice in all tracker forums, comments, or IRC. Don't talk about the worldwide Jewish conspiracy. Don't call other users faggots and berate their uploads. Do report them and laugh when they get warned or worse.

#5 If you don't want to use a seedbox have some source of content to upload. If you're dead weight you won't last long. Before you're set for life either upload or cross seed.

#6 There's nothing wrong with hoarding buffer as long as you plan on actually using it. The earlier you get the hard work out of the way the earlier you can fully enjoy the benefits tracker membership can offer you.

#7 Don't collect trackers unless you plan on actually using them. I know, it's tempting to be able to open every door. To access all the things. But these assholes are serious about that one account per lifetime bullshit and if your account gets disabled due to inactivity it's up to them if it will be enabled again or not. You never know, you might need it later on.

#8 Only invite people who already know the private tracker game unless it's to some shithouse tracker like IPT. Only accept invites from people at your level or better. If you have no contacts that know anything about this shit just disregard it and don't fuck with unofficial invites. Your life will be better for it.

#9 If you actually like the tracker and the staff donate if you feel like it. It's your money, faggot. But don't feel obligated at all to do so. Especially if you hate them

#10 Once your accounts are in good standing and you have access to everything you want get a fucking life. Stop thinking about that next tracker you want to get into and consume some of the content you got from the ones you already had. Go outside. Breathe some fresh air. Meet some people that aren't self absorbed assholes that will fill you with rage. I know you can do it anon!

 

[Admin]

The curry commandments
Note that i partly disagree with a lot of this:

1 Thou shalt not use seedboxes.
2 Thou shalt collect no trackers beyond Cabal.
3 Thou shalt make no posts in the forum.
4 Thou shalt respect staff to their face but mock them on /ptg/ or OT IRC.
5 Thou shalt not accept unofficial invites.
6 Thou shalt not donate to trackers.
7 Thou shalt not invite anyone to any tracker, furthermore thou shalt not accept invites to any tracker except through official recruitment.
8 Thou shalt not hoard buffer.
9 Thou shalt not leech without seeding.
10 Thou shalt always having a big heart (for you).

Torrentleech and milkie might be exceptions to 2 (neither seem particularly great though).

I don't see any reason to be disrespectful against staff at all, they are doing important work to keep these sites running.

No real downside with building, you have limited storage and often there are advantages with getting upload beyond what is required in terms of ratio rules.

 

[Admin]

Filelist.io is pretty bad
At first i wasn't planning to join that site since it didn't really seem to offer much of what i was looking for. Recently however i saw that they were basically giving out invites via their IRC so i decided to try to join anyway hoping they would be useful as a more general tracker.

Early on however there were red flags, i saw recruiters ask people about their ratios which is a good indication that the recruiter didn't understand what's actually important.

There were a lot of problems even getting to the interview in the first place since you could wait for hours only to get disconnected, often you couldn't even join the recruitment channel in the first place. I ended up basically falling asleep only to later wake up and see that it was time for me to do the interview, i was a bit groggy but still passed the interview easily, the recruiter i talked to was actually nice and i don't have anything bad to say about him/her.

Unfortunately FL does not actually offer me much in terms of content i want that i cannot find on GGn or RED. I am not into really into movies and if you are a movie entusiast you are far better off using a tracker like PTP that is actually focused on movies rather than some low-tier private tracker.

FL is also very much a Romanian tracker which makes the site hard to use if you are not Romanian, you can still use the site but you end up having to use translation services a lot just to navigate the site and understand what you are supposed to do.

FL does not give you any starting upload so i wrongly assumed that the ratio requirements would respect that, nope it turns out that the minimum ratio is always 0.7 and that you will risk having your account banned if your ratio falls below that and you do not get it back up in time.

They do have a shop where you can buy upload but the minimum quantity to buy is 500 GiB and it takes some time to earn the 600 bonus points required for that.

You receive FLCoins per hour for each completed(all files downloaded) torrent you seed. These are the bonus rates:
- 0.2 FLCoins per hour for each torrent, however, this bonus is applied only for 10 torrents;
- 1.0 FLCoins per hour if your seeding size(sum of the size of all your completed torrents) is 50GB or bigger;
- 0.2 FLCoins per hour for each 50GB you are seeding(maximum 1TB);
- 1.0 FLCoins per hour if you have 200 reputation points or more.

You might think that you will be able to upload new content to the site to improve the ratio but no for that you first have to be power user of the site and that requires a ratio of 1.05 and at least 25 GiB of upload. A lot of people with bad internet will have a very hard time getting there without downloading loads of freeleech content. To make things worse you don't even get to upload by default as a power user, you have to apply for that, no wonder RED has 30 times more torrents.

I didn't really want to download any movies but i kinda had to do it anyway just to get anything uploaded to the site (they had freeleech on some movies), i unfortunately downloaded to the same drive i store my games on so i later got into trouble when trying to download from GGn.

It is actually pretty easy to get upload on the site if you have decent internet so i got out of ratio trouble very quickly, that also means that there really isn't much of a reason to apply to become some uploader. It also does not seem like the site owner is willing to make the changes required to make the site more competetive for, you know, torrenting.

Too much freeleech has ruined their economy to the point where there isn't much reason to seed anything more than the minimum once you have saved up 600 bonus points to buy 500 GiB upload.

Hit and run rules
I don't find it reasonable to ban people from restarting their computer say 1 hour after downloading a torrent, i don't know to what extent this is being enforced though.

Translated via google translate:

Do not practice hit&run (h&r), downloaded torrents can only be closed if they have ration 1 or the seed time per torrent is 48 hours. Torrents can be closed after a minimum of 3 hours have accumulated from the end of the download, after which you can return to the seed and for 1 week to achieve the ration 1 or the 48 hours of the seed. If you know you won't be able to seed this minimum time before returning, don't bother taking it. You'll download it later when you know you'll be keeping your PC open more.

Computers can freeze/bluescreen without warning due to hardware instability even if you are using a solid operating system, this is especially a problem with intel raptor lake CPUs.

 

[Admin]

About the community aspect of some private trackers
It's very common that private trackers have things like forums and IRC channels where people of their community can talk to each other. That sounds all fine and good but there are problems.

First off there are many other places where you can find a community, you do not have to join any private tracker for that. The main reasons i use private tracker is to be able to access content i would otherwise be unable to access and reduce the risk of getting malware.

And by participating in forums you will risk losing access to the site as a whole if you write things there mods take issue which (exactly what that is depends on the site) so if you actually need the site for content you cannot get elsewhere it might be best to simply avoid the forums altogether.

I personally do enjoy the GGn forums and that community while i mainly use RED to actually get music.

FL might for example provide a community that many romanians appreciate while people outside romania mainly use that site because they cannot get access to PTP.

Wenna_ROG wrote:

Yeah, we have similar content like others, it's not difficult to get in, the terms are pretty basic....But if you don't like it there, you can always access this https://filelist.io/delacct.php and leave.

It's a community, with a lot of people working to keep it the way it is. It's our home... You don't have to stay u/vintologi24.

 

[Admin]

What's even the point with "Hit and Run" rules?
It's fairly common for trackers to have minimum seeding rules but how does that even help in the first place?

What you want isn't for people to seed for 7 days or even 30 days, what you want is to have people seed for years so people can actually access old content.

The idea might be that if people are not allowed to delete what they downloaded quickly or stop the torrent right away they are probably not going to do it at all but from what i have seen these rules tend to get people into trouble who haven't actually done anything wrong really.

It can even be counter-productive if the site outright bans people for not seeding for say 3 days (it's hard to seed if you got banned).

TheGoodRobot wrote:

Long story short: I messed up and severely underestimated how difficult it was going to be moving 2000+ torrents to a new server. I was at 13/15 HnRs because of it, and then finally got slapped with the remaining two (Thanks, Psych Season 1 and Psych Season 2) after they were both taking three days to transfer.

Is there an appeal process? Anyone ever have any luck getting a ban overturned there? I know it's my fault, but I really loved being a part of HUNO and would really like to make it right.

Edit: a kind redditor messaged the staff in IRC on my behalf and staff is looking into it. Lesson learned: talk to staff before something like this happens so you don't have to grovel on reddit about it.

PCbuildinman1979 wrote:

This is exactly why I lost access to their site as well. All of my torrents had some issues on my seed box. By the time I figured out what was going on I had way too many hit and runs and they permanently Banned Me. I was not able to get a hold of anyone from their staff to dispute it.

vintologi24 wrote:

Was that even any loss though?

We are not talking about a tracker like RED, GGn or PTP here.

 

[Admin]

How private trackers can provide value without offering any unique or hard to find content
First off content being available on some other tracker really doesn't matter unless you are actually able to gain access to said tracker in a reasonable manner.

One reason why people sometimes use another lower tier tracker is that they are having ratio trouble (for example on RED) but that's not really a problem i am having.

Another way in which a tracker can be useful is in discovering new content. You don't really need a private tracker for this but sometimes they do have decent ways for you to actually find content you like.

Often i download content without even knowing if i am going to enjoy it. On RED i find myself sometimes listening to a sample of the song (if provided) but sometimes i just download right away, sometimes i download just one of the songs to check out but usually i end up downloading the full album anyway so why bother?

One potential advantage with having a tracker that is very hard to join is that it makes it hard for authorities to get into their via undercover account(s), not sure if that really matters in practice though.

But the biggest advantage with lower tier private trackers is that it makes you appreciate the great ones like GGn and RED.

 

[Admin]

Download more for faster promotions
The more you download the more upload you can get from seeding. That's why it can be hard to keep your ratio down if you actually have good internet allowing you to get a lot of upload just from what you have downloaded.

Don't obsess over your ratio if it's well above what's actually required. The buffer you "spend" is actually an investment towards future uploading opportunities thanks to larger seeding size.

To get promoted on RED you only need to have ratio of 0.65 or higher, having higher ratio doesn't help at all when it comes to getting promoted theire, they only go by amount uploaded and torrents uploaded.

 

[Admin]

Hilarious 4chan post about private tracker users
This was too funny not to get reposted here.

One day in the life of a private tracker cuck...

He wakes up and goes directly to his computer, an AB tab is always open that way he gets ready for a trump competition with julzer, to see who can trump more garbage uploads made from fresh PU/Elites (future aka-chans).

Then, after some time he checks hdb to see what's hot in terms of new discs and internals and gets ready for some pixel counting comparisons with slowpics. After a few posts in the forums and smelling his own farts with other nerds in technical convos, it's lunch time. He does not have much time because he has a busy schedule in the private trackers world. He takes this business very seriously, his mom cooks for him as per usual since he doesn't have a real job. In the meantime while he awaits, see that the donation in PTP is behind the goal sitting at 10% when it should be 14%. So he donates the necessary amount with his mom's credit card.

And since it's friday he forget all about the food and starts uploading like crazy all the new releases to RED (and then OPS). Gets mad when Ilikepeaches get there first, but it only makes him stronger. Job's done and he is tired so he go chil in GGn's IRC while he coollect lines for his GG XX badge. There isn't much time left in the day, and since he isn't actually interested in consuming content only hoarding it, he downloads another 2tb batch for the archive project on PTP and goes to sleep dreaming about his past and future contributions with a smile in his face

https://archive.is/bbSIj

https://ghostarchive.org/archive/RqSiu

 

[Admin]

You can become Elite TM on RED without uploading any new content
This can be rather tedius of course and i am not sure if i will bother myself but it's very much doable without even uploading anything new.

The main requirements are

0. Having 500 perfect flacs
1. Having uploaded at least 500 GiB
2. Having uploaded to 500 different "unique groups" (albums basically)
3. Having a ratio of 0.65 or higher

You can easily get "perfect flacs" by transcoding to lower sampling-rate or bitrate, for some reason they count that, not sure why. Might be that a lot of people are downloading the 16-44 / 16-48 versions uploaded so they want to encourage that.

As for unique groups: you can simply add shitty mp3 files nobody wants to loads of albums you have downloaded. If you want to actually help out others you can download albums where someone has asked for an mp3 version (usually V0).

If you don't have a seedbox you will need to simply get a big seeding size (like 2TiB) use all your freeleech tokens and spend your buffer to get their as fast as possible. Main concern here is actually storage. You want to back up all your important .flac files obviously (doesn't really matter if some shitty .mp3 files get lost if your upload already got snatched).

Some people have rented a seedbox for like a months to get loads of upload but i don't personally plan on ever doing that.

 

[Admin]

The vintologi rules to follow on private trackers
This has worked for me so far but my experience is a bit limited.

0. Do not invite anyone before becoming official recruiter (or in some other way getting immunity from what the people you invite do). Refer your friends to official recruitment channels instead.
1. Do not accept user invites.
2. Do not participate in spaces that allow invites to be traded or sold (in violation of tracker rules), don't even make an account there, don't visit those sites without proxy/tor/vpn/etc.
3. Do not argue with staff or moderators, be respectful towards them and the important work they are doing.
4. Do not talk about politics on private trackers (use public channels for that).
5. Try to follow the rules, especially important rules, read them.
6. Get yourself a good home internet idally with static ip (avoid CGNAT like the Plague), get least 60 Mbps upload speed (ideally a lot more than that).
7. Avoid low tier trackers.
8. Get immunity from inactivity disabling quickly if possible.
9. Avoid resorting to seedbox usage for upload.
10. Upload new torrents to the site if possible if it's a good site worthy of your content (RED, GGn, etc).
11. Download everything you want if you have the buffer and disk-space for it. The more you invest into snatching torrents the more you get to upload later.
12. Always download the highest quality option (such as 24-192 for music).

 

[Admin]

Economy and requests
While you can have requests where you are merely asking for stuff without anything in return requests are far more effective when people actually get something of value for filling those requests. People might for example have to buy a copy with their own money, it's only fair that people who pay money to help out others get a reasonable compensation for that.

On RED there is actually value in having buffer there since the economy isn't too easy and people need upload to level up to the better user classes.

If it's easy to get upload on a site people there will be other valuables that can be offered for requests (things that people value for that particular site).

You can for example have a system where you can collect various virtual items and some of those will then be rare.

You can have a virtual currency for the site where you get rewarded for various things such as

Bonus per GiB downloaded = (size+1)/size

Which will be limited to 100% of the size of the torrent for each individual downloader.

Rare items as reward for requests
I don't think requests themselves should be time-limited but you can have a time limit set for a portion of the reward (such as for virtual items).

The clock would then be ticking which would put pressure on people to fill the request in time to get some virtual item(s) they want. This fomo mechanism could end up being very effective in getting valuable content to the tracker.

Even collectors might for example have more than one of some items and then they could offer those virtual items to help out requests.

Should people be allowed to set conditions for filling requests
On RED you are not allowed to say "i fill the requests if you add 10 GiB more" since that is viewed as holding the request at ransom but is this really the correct policy?

I don't really see anything wrong with someone saying (i will fill the request if item x is added to the pot) provided they actually keep their promise.

Of course people should upload right away if they actually have the material (even if the bounty is small) but sometimes getting material someone wants require a lot of effort and it can be good to know that someone will actually fill it if you add more bounty.

If you deliberately wait to fill a request in an attempt to get more bounty from it you will risk missing out on an upload due to someone else filling it instead.

 

[Admin]

Redditor got into trouble after accepting user invite
Most likely a person higher up in a tree invited a really bad user and now they are in big trouble. Some trackers would have just banned them right away without even bothering to check on them to see if they are innocent.

R_ealE wrote:

What are my options here? I’ve heard I shouldn’t divulge my username on other trackers, but I’m assuming I can’t refuse the mod. Can I just send screenshots with my name covered? Or am I forced to ‘out’ myself?
Also; I have no idea why I’m being asked to do this, but I’m assuming my acct has been flagged for some reason 🙁

https://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/1erg0lo/being_asked_to_link_acct_from_another_tracker_by/

felix1429 wrote:

You may not have done anything wrong yourself, but if your inviter (or someone up their invite tree) bought/sold/traded invites or something like that, it can result in an invite tree ban, which you may end up caught up in if that's what it ends ups being. I wouldn't bother trying to come up with a story or anything, just give them what they're asking for and keep your fingers crossed. And be honest, they likely know the answer to a lot of the questions they're asking you.

R_ealE wrote:

I don’t have a story to tell. Gave them screenshots but asking for my link to another tracker seems overboard as it looks like they’re going to use it against me if I ever get on the tracker again in the future. I have a great rep on that tracker and now that is going to be wrecked as well? Doesn’t make sense to me.

CrepusculrPulchrtude wrote:

They have your IP. If they really wanna go the route of fucking with you on other sites they don’t need screenshots.

felix1429 wrote:

Asking for profile links is relatively common, depending on the circumstances. Also, how would they use a profile link against you, on a different tracker? Regardless, they likely wouldn't "need" a profile link from you if they really wanted to verify it was you with another tracker's staff, simply exchanging IP addresses would be more than enough to match an account between two trackers, if the staff really want to.
Unless staff on the other tracker say anything to you, I'd just continue to use the tracker like normal - if there are any issues staff will reach out to you.

No_Yam_7323 wrote:

If they're asking they probably already know. The test here is being honest about what they ask. Chances are they know some, but not all and how you fill in the gaps matters, especially if a lie is caught and not matching with things they know.

I'm not accusing you of anything, just saying why things can happen.

yarisken75 wrote:

They asked me this also before they got me banned on a tracker. It can be to make a profile of you and they keep the records on irc. If you ever join again under another user they can track you. So be aware, a mod is not asking this without a reason.

ZiPEX00 wrote:

I guess they are asking for the site. You got your invite from and asking for your profile link. This is common when you're under suspension for buying an invitation get ready to be questioned about how you got your invite, sounds to me that someone been caught and now they are looking at the invites tree he/she have gave out.

WiIIiam_M_ButtIicker wrote:

I'm not sure if I'd share your other tracker username. Sounds like you're about to get banned from the first tracker (deserved or not) and if they have a relationship with the second tracker may get you banned there too.

CrepusculrPulchrtude wrote:

If they have a relationship they can just send the user IP address.

GoodMan059 wrote:

keep you account separated even use one browser per tracker if you can't do privacy config and different torrent clients per tracker.

Spiron123 wrote:

And what will the fellow be doing vis a vis the ip address?

GoodMan059 wrote:

public ip address is not you... it's a collection of device. and use finger print spoof extension too. That,s why we need location sharing turned on to pinpoint a device

Spiron123 wrote:

My good man, you are a heavily misguided missile destined and ready to strike a few greenhorns.

 

[Admin]

Redditor claimed: "i got cabal banned from being invited by someone shady"
This is why you shouldn't accept user invites, it can really screw you over later down the line.

Great_Gur_8412 wrote:

How does cross banning work?
I got into PTP, RED and the like years ago, but my inviter ended up doing some shady shit and got me completely fucked. I ended up getting banned across those top tier trackers.

Now look, I'm not looking to dupe or anything, I don't want to waste my time trying to grind back in, but I do want to know if some of the other places, mid tier ones, will ban me on sight if I try to get recruited. Places like ANT, MTV, AB, etc. do I just not bother?

iwasfight wrote:

even if your inviter was a jackass, you still have a chance of talking your way back in if you were a solid user. visit their IRC. its worth a shot.

Great_Gur_8412 wrote:

Tried that already, no dice.

No_Yam_7323 wrote:

Basically all trackers talk, to what extent is up to the relationship with the other trackers also impacted. Even TL that is basically public will.

Cabal ban does not = banned from everywhere, every site makes their own choice, many are just not willing to take the risk. Even PTP/HDB/BTN decide completely on their own, HDB being the better one for having original thoughts and not some sheep.

yarisken75 wrote:

There are private channels were they keep record of you with a lot more than only the cabal trackers. They have knowledge of your current accounts on a lot of trackers like TL, MTV, UDHBits and FL etc... so if you keep them and join the cabal again , in time, you will get banned again. Do not underestimate the knowledge and how far the cabal is going to go to keep you banned for life.

https://www.reddit.com/r/trackers/comments/1ctpfa5/how_does_cross_banning_work/

 

[Admin]

Building up a new tracker to become top-tier seems almost impossible
Besides the technical challenges in getting everything to work properly there is also the network effect favoring already established trackers.

Why should people bother to join if you don't have content worth joining for?

And how are you going to get content worth joining for is barely anyone is actually using the site?

Most movie trackers would be doomed if PTP made it easier to join to the point where people would just join PTP instead of resorting to lower tier movie trackers.

But besides members who actually upload new content you will also need volunteers to do things like torrent moderation and recruitment.

Let's say you are going to accept 10000 members via recruitment and spend 15 minutes on vetting each of them, that's 2500 hours or 312.5 days if you spend 8 hours a day on it.

A RED interview can take over an hour, they often do several at once but it's still a rather time-consuming way to get new members which is why only a few trackers have a system like that (most prominently RED and OPS). A good way to thank them for letting you join via the interview system is to upload 100+ flac albums.

On RED and GGn currently it can take hours (sometimes over a day) for a mod to take action after a torrent has been reported/trumped (such as due to someone not compressing the flac files properly). You might be told after like 3 hours that you screwed up when trying to Trump the old torrent and then you have to fix your shit and upload again.

Main issue with the waiting is honestly the paranoia "i may have screwed up to the point where a mod warns me" which is extremely unlikely of course. I haven't really run into any issues interacting with mods so far (sometimes you have to wait for their decision but that's about it).

RED has over 3 million torrents, making sure all of those are good upload isn't easy. It relies on people reporting/trumping problematic torrents, people who fix bad uploads, mods that approve of the replacements when good enough, etc.

Then there is security measures to prevent invite/account trading from becoming prominent. You might for example have to disable everyone in an invite tree and then manually probe those users to see if anyone there should be re-enabled again (you can of course simply not bother with the less important users and simply let say 40 or 68 users in the tree stay banned without recourse).

 

[RED-chad]

Invites disabled on RED after asking for invite
They actually got disabled completely at first but thanks to their contributions to the site they later got the account back but without invites or access to the invite forum.

Obviously a bad idea to argue with mod right away after they have allowed you back so you should probably wait like a year first.

CalendarPlenty4483 wrote and later deleted:

Re-enabling invites on RED
Throw-away account for obvious reason, I was first disabled because I honestly misinterpreted the rule about not asking invites in pms, thinking that asking to someone who USED to offer invites in the past was ok, I mean, that was not out-of-the-blue in my unexperienced mind and I thought maybe they forgot they have new ones and didn't update the thread, let's try...

I explained everything on IRC and after pointing out my effort in time (I spent months ripping hundreds of perfect FLACs) and money (guys... lot of money, I managed to fill request which were left un-filled for YEARS, and I uploaded cds worth hundreds even with no request ongoing for it, just because I wanted to contribute with cool stuff) I was re-enabled but without invite privileges, and this will prevent me to have the ''fastest'' (if one could use this word) access to HDBits and BTN.

Is there a way anytime, even in a year o more, that my privileges could be re-enabled? I really just wanted to be the perfect ''model user'', I made a mistake by negligence, but I was never a non-contributing user in the first place, and my mistake was not even a ''malignous'' one like trade/selling or manipulating stats or stuff like that.

PS

I did found very kind and incredible people in the trackers world, but god what a disappointment to find the ''I WiLL rEpOrT yOu rIgHt nOw'' moron like this is a race and not a sharing community.

PSS

I will edit if I got disabled again or get invites re-enabled...

lupin-san wrote:

I'm confused. What was removed from your account? The ability to invite others or access to class restricted forums?

If it was the former, I don't see how it stops you from trying to get in to other trackers unless you are using those invites to trade.

CalendarPlenty4483 wrote:

Both, I'm not trading anything, the thing is that trying from somewhere else would mean wait at least 3-4 years.

I also wrote in the post that ''this will prevent me to have the ''fastest'' (if one could use this word) access to HDBits and BTN'' because from RED it's 1 year and 2 year respectively (If I remember well)

Plus, having a huge music collection at home, that was my only shot to become TM in a tracker...

Spiron123 wrote:

Appeal after a few months of good conduct.

Less_Ad7772 wrote:

Not that it helps, but never mess with invites on a private tracker. Never invite people and don’t ask. Just join via recruitment threads.

Ashsite wrote:

I'm pretty sure you're xxxxxxu and I got one of your PMs. Just to be clear, I ignored the PM and didn't report it so I'm assuming you sent it out to multiple people, and someone in that list reported you.

But honestly, I don't see this happening. It doesn't seem like a big deal to me since you weren't actively invite trading/buying/selling but from what I know of invite privs being disabled, they usually don't revert it. You could try again after a year or so. It's worth a shot atleast, but I wouldn't hold my breath.

 

[Admin]

RED vs music streaming
Looking at tidal we see that they have over 110 million songs which is actually pretty good even when you compare to RED.
Red currently offers 1.6 million releases and 310K unconfirmed releases.

Advantages with RED are:

0. Good quality control (they will tell you if a release was lossy, etc).
1. Being able to make requests.
2. Not having to pay to use the site (you might still want to pay for SSD storage and 1Gbps upload speed but you are not forced to, you can simply upload content).
3. Being able to listen to your music when your internet isn't working.
4. You get flac files that you can use for stuff (such as to make videos).

Disadvantages with RED are:

5. Can be difficult to get enough upload for making requests for all music you want that aren't on the site in a timely manner.
6. All the flac files you are downloading take up a lot of space, you don't need to store any flac files on your computer to stream from tidal/qobuz/whatever.
7. Getting torrents uploaded in order to gain upload and rank up can become rather tedious/expensive (depending on what you are uploading) but we also need people to do those things in order to make the site better.

One option of course is to both use RED and one streaming service to get the stuff you want. There are loads of people getting a lot of upload to RED by ripping from streaming services (you can even ask people on RED to do it for you if you want something, no need to put up bounty).
Personally i like using DeadBeef for music listening and i don't have any plans for changing that. I hate subscription services in general.

 

[Admin]

Why giving seeding bonuses doesn't result in better seeded torrents
You might (hopefully not) think that people will seed more if there is some program to specifically reward it but we don't see that for RED vs OPS

https://torrents.neocities.org/

The more bonuses people get from seeding the less they need to seed since there will be less need for it.

And you are already being rewarded by seeding on RED, it's just that you don't get your reward until someone actually downloads from you (besides lower required ratio if you have downloaded less than 100 GiB).

RED also has a very effective system for requests where your request is likely to actually get filled:

OPS have a lot fewer requests and they often end up not being filled: