There are now many technologies for P2P file sharing:

  • Usenet
  • Bittorrent
  • IPFS
  • Tenfinger
  • more?

And also several technologies for anonymization:

  • VPNs
  • Tor
  • I2P

AFAICT the most popular option is still Bittorrent with various public and private trackers and indexers. Private trackers seem to be the most effective option that communities have converged on.

I’ve tried all of the above solutions over the years and while I think something like I2P sounds great in theory, it doesn’t seem to actually work well in practice. Because it’s not terribly popular, it’s hard to know what to expect.

We clearly still haven’t found the ideal model that can provide both good performance, discovery, access, availability, and anonymity. But do you think we will actually make progress on these problems? We seem to have stabilized on a local maximum.

  • BlueÆther@no.lastname.nzEnglish
    122·
    3 days ago

    Ive trued private trackers, but there is very little for me to try and keep up the ratio them while on public my share ratio is well above 5.

    Public trackers and no vpn gets it done

    • Flames5123@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      I’m on IP torrents. It’s 2 weeks or 1:1 health. And you get points just for seeding. I have my client auto delete after 3 weeks. And I can just zap stuff I don’t want with points. It’s so low management when I’m downloading stuff that’s newly releasing. I hardly ever login to the site anymore with my *arr setup.

      • BlueÆther@no.lastname.nzEnglish
        41·
        3 days ago

        see, I don’t really do popular (except for the kids) and private trackers just seemed like too much hard work

        • Damage@feddit.itEnglish
          9·
          3 days ago

          They’re certainly an imperfect solution, downloading shit you don’t care about just to build ratio, at least at first, seems really stupid.

          But you can’t argue with the quality of the content on good private trackers.

          • m-p{3}@lemmy.caEnglish
            3·
            3 days ago

            Most private trackers have a point system where you accumulate points that you can exchange for upload credit, as a mean to provide an incentive to keep less popular torrents active.

            That way you can build up your ratio without downloading stuff you don’t want.

            • Damage@feddit.itEnglish
              1·
              3 days ago

              Yeah I’m in multiple private ones, I know how it works, it’s still not easy

        • W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          2·
          3 days ago

          Keep seeding and your ratio goes up, even if people aren’t downloading the file.

          Or, donate to the site.

          Most people do the former and that’s perfectly fine.

          • Damage@feddit.itEnglish
            21·
            3 days ago

            Donating means either having a trace that links you to an illegal entity, or getting into the crypto mess