I don't DL that much and it's usually just books so I still use torrents and a VPN.

Usenet. If only because I don't have access to any good private trackers and the public ones I used to use are dead. And I have access to good enough indexers to get the job done.

With my new setup though I run everything through a VPN tunnel so if I ever found some good trackers again I'd not be against it.

You can use sonarr and radarr without indexers. There's even built-in support for major trackers without need for additional apps like Prowlarr.

That said, I use autobrr to handle the monitoring of releases and let the other apps filter out what they actually want

DC++ and Soulseek gang here plus some personal contacts and sites mainly DDL

Yeah I like the smell of my own farts. I got PT access too but I try to minimize use these days. Usenet is great but I have too much ego to pay for anything currently outside of internet connection and storage.

Torrent

I am a super casual pirate these days. Qbittorrent with jackett, and debrid for streaming gives me everything I need. I used to do Usenet and torrents with a bunch of private trackers but I like how easy it is not having all that crap. Managing my debrid and syncler subscriptions is about the limit of the regular admin I want to do. My only issue is public torrents feel a bit exposed but it's not something I worry about.

torrent and soulseek networks, mostly

Torrents still and mostly, but I do utilize Usenet as well.

Personally I use both. I have Sonar set to pull from Usenet first, then a private tracker, then a few public trackers. I just like Usenet because it works really good with all my wife's reality TV shows. I always had trouble getting them with torrents.

Usenet for most things movies, music, tv, ebooks, etc.

I don't really pirate software or pc games at this point.

Torrents for things like rom collections and console games for emulators.

Also randomly will torrent things like magazine packs for old mags like computer shopper from archive.org for whimsy.

Still using torrents. They just work!

I just pay for a monthly Plex share, got tired of managing files and subtitles and not having a good dedicated set up for it.

Had been on torrents for super long but never used a private tracker so reliability and speed was all over the place. Recently switched to Usenet and the speed and inherent security far surpasses my experience with torrents. Couple bucks a month and nearly maxing out a 1Gbps connection is fine by me.

I mainly use usenet, but I torrent anything I can't get on usenet. Maybe my indexer or server just sucks. I use Sonarr, Radarr, and SABnzbd plus Frugal Usenet and NZBgeek for usenet downloads. Qbitorrent plus VPN for torrents.

I've been torrenting for years, recently discovered Soulseek. This is the first time i'm hearing about sonarr and radarr.

usenet by default and torrent as a secondary option