It was only a better place when access was gatekept by universities and research institutes. Once the general public was allowed in, carpetbaggers from Florida (the same sorts who would get into crypto a generation later) realised that you could flood the discussion forums the trusting natives had built with spam for no cost, and if even one person out of millions took the bait, you’d come out on top. It became a blasted wasteland soon after that, with people retreating to mailing lists.

They'll sometimes have issues but I haven't ever heard of an actual attack against any of them.

You'll need a Usenet server but at least two is preferable - one following DMCA and one following NTD.

Then you'll need indexers. There's no limit on these that you'll want. Each will have different content and you can use some services to track how often you actually get good results from them or how much overlap there is.

Then get a download client. I like SABNZBd.

After that, you can automate it. Sonarr is gold standard for TV shows and Radarr for movies. Lidarr exists for music but it's pretty hard to automate good music since there are so many different versions - radio edits, DJ, live, samples, remixes, etc.

Best part about Usenet is that it's much easier to get what you want. With Torrents, you're relying on seeders for each file you're downloading. These mostly end up being newer media and usually the shittiest quality someone can produce (looking at you, YIFY).

With Usenet, it's all coming from the servers. If it's been uploaded, it's almost always still there and you can usually download it as fast as your Internet connection allows. Sometimes you'll find missing parts, almost always due to either DMCA/NTD requests or because the uploads were old and not downloaded recently enough. The former is the reason I recommend at least two servers. However, you'll still usually have multiple other versions of that file uploaded elsewhere. If you're using Sonarr/Radarr, they will mark it as a failed download and try another matching item instead.