Better speeds, better access to niche content, arguably better privacy.

For me:

• Lifetime of torrents, honestly I rarely have dead torrents on private trackers. Also, most of them send an alert to previous seeders telling them one torrent needs some seeds. So for that it's WAY better than public.
• Niche contents, I'm into rare movies and some movies are only available on private trackers (unfortunately), so yeah, for me no choice. Though I really miss VXT releases on RARBG :(.

Except that.. Not much. I think I still would keep my seedbox if I was on public trackers. Private or public, we all have to do our jobs and participate in seeding what we got :)

You mean private trackers, yeah? The advantage is obviously they are not open to the public, which means copyright trolls need an account on the tracker to view the IP address of torrent participants. Secondly users are vetted for quality so the torrents on them are well seeded and trusted.

The advantage of a private tracker is also its disadvantage. You need to get through the vetting process. An invite and history are required to join which can be kind of a chicken and egg thing. It all takes some effort and facility.

If you don't have your own full time torrent server with high upload bandwidth, it's going to be difficult to get the seed ratios you need. Best thing there is to contract a seedbox. Even so you have to put the effort into working your way up to the ladder by getting a history of tracker accounts.

Private torrents are faster and safer. The downside is you typically have to maintain an upload ratio, which can be very hard to achieve without a seedbox.

I was using different private trackers but in the end dropped them and went back to public ones. One thing that private trackers may offer is the forum or the discussion board and plenty of user generated content. But in general there are many negative points:

• the drama: lots of users feel entitled and there is a very negative attitude towards newcomers
• less security: there was a time when an italian private tracker was caught and ended up giving the name and data of few active users. I don't buy that you have to use a legit email and no vpn.
• you have to pay for a seedbox and always track your ratio: I seed forever most stuff (4k+ torrents) but I don't want this to become a time sink

• they are properly moderated so no fake torrents or malware (and anyone trying to upload those is immediately banned)
• many have rules about formats, nfo files - another guarantee that your file is what it says it is
• duplicates are not usually allowed - eg if an album already exists in FLAC format, you can’t upload another one
• ratio requirements mean people almost always seed, and many use seed boxes which means speed is much faster. Movies download to my seed box in a couple of seconds typically.

The main thing for me is that Private Trackers, because they incentivise continued seeding, will maintain greater activity for older torrents. People are even given bonus incentives for seeding content that has few seeders. As a result, older content and torrents that would be long dead in public trackers are still alive and well in the private ones, and when they become relevant again can be brought back to the public trackers.

If you are able to get all the content you need from public trackers and you don't worry about copyright agancies tracking you than there's no reason for you at all to bother with private trackers.

The main benefits of private trackers are:

• Download speed. Many users of these trackers will use seedboxes to build ratio. This generally results in a faster download speed for peers.

• Security. Many (but not all) private trackers have strict entry barriers, such as invite only or application based signups. This keeps copyright trolls out of their swarms, which eliminates the need for a vpn or other method of masking your identity. Depending on where you live this can range from a nicety to a necessity.

• Longevity. Torrents generally live longer on private trackers.

• Community. Some private trackers have a forum or IRC channel where you can interact with other community members.

• Availability. Many private trackers will have a wider range of releases of a single media.

• Quality. You will generally find higer quality releases on private trackers. That's not to say that high quality releases don't make it to public trackers, some do and some don't.

• Faster releases. Releases will typically come to private trackers first. May torrents originate on these trackers or come from scene groups and trickle down.

If you're finding everything you want on public trackers then you probably aren't missing anything. You could test the waters on TL or something next time they open.

Content you may not be able to find elsewhere (for example, MySpleen has tons of old discontinued/out of print content), as well as you aren't going to find copyright holders in private tracker swarms monitoring for IP's to have infringement notices sent to.

Downside: If you don't like seeding, you get to fuck yourself and get used to liking seeding or you lose your account.

If you get in really exclusive ones you can bring it up in conversations as an icebreaker and put it on your resume

In short, more privacy and a curated library of content.

I have been able to find everything I wanted using public ones.

In your use case there is no benefit, just keep doing what you're doing now.

People do find it helpful to look into private trackers if there are things they can't find on public torrent indexers or if they are looking for higher quality releases.

Public trackers' public nature means they're more likely to result in your activity being seen / tracked by entities you don't want it tracked by, for one. Ever gotten one of those letters from your ISP warning you not to download pirated shit? My understanding is that that's usually the result of using an insecure tracker.

I think you get new releases faster and you can also request more obscure stuff too

Access to content that isn't on public trackers and is well seeded for the most part.

Curation, breadth of access (less important if you don’t have obscure tastes which it sounds like you don’t OP, and that’s fine), quality control, security to a small degree, and community. Also if you get upload credit you can use the requests option and have some of the most rabid nerds on this world looking for what you want.

Top reason which people will be in denial about though is epeen

In short most people don’t need it and probably will never get in the most selective ones. If you’re not satisfied with public trackers or too worried you’re likely better off with Usenet or real-debrid.

Well, imagine private trackers being like subreddits or magazines in the Fediverse. There are private torrent communities that only share TTRPG books, files for FVX/Motion Graphics, Art/Photography books, Magazines from a certain era, STL files for 3D printing, etc. And all of these trackers have very strict filters for both posters and visitors so the quality of the content is top-notch.

In these trackers, there is stuff that you won't find elsewhere, period. Talking from experience... Good luck finding scans of Spanish tech/video game magazines from the 90s/00s, or copyrighted stuff like precise 3D models of Nintendo Switch's Joycon shells, out in the common web.

Only benefits for me are that they have faster download speeds and that I don't need a VPN.

I'd like to know too

Just less leecher and hit and run, nothing else if u are in a country who ignore dmca and where most of the people pirate without a profit

Some private trackers are shady. Even if you seed, they might undercount your contribution and ask for money. If that happens, it's a scam, just walk away.

Effectively, there is no benefit. But if you are looking for really niche stuff you can't find on public trackers, you might have success on a private one with a focused category of torrents

Upvote if you have fond memories of Oink's Pink Palace.

Boost if you were there when Trent Reznor dropped a chunk of his new album directly into the tracker.

For me it's their speed and safety. I've been using them since over a decade and I've never had any issues wrt viruses etc

@editediting

Anybody got one of them there invites? About time I check one out.