What makes y’all torrent instead of DDL? I read in the megathread that DDL is less likely to get you caught, but a lot of people on here seem to really enjoy torrenting and I must be completely clueless as to why. I’d like to have your insights

  • weirdo_from_space@sh.itjust.works
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    12 minutes ago

    DDL costs money, whether in form of usenet blocks or a debrid subscription, or a subscription to the filehoster themselves if you rely on just one of them. Depending on where you live you can use torrents completely for free.

  • zeca@lemmy.ml
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    8 hours ago

    You download from a bunch of other people at the same time. So if you have a 300mb/s connection and 5 people have the file and are uploading at 20mb/s, it gets a chunk of the file fron each of them, so you would download at 100mb/s.

    Besides, you can pause and resume the download as much as you want without corrupting the file. So if youre dowloading a 50gb folder, you can turn your pc off, and continue later. With DDLs, the download link expires and most browsers cant resume downloads properly. Plus if the browser corrupts the download you have to start over. The torrent uses checksums to detect corrupted parts of the file and redownloads just that small part, and in the end you get a clean file.

  • daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    DDL links will eventually go down, and it’s a single point of failure, once down the file may be lost forever.

    Torrent is much more resilient long term.

    Not strictly torrent. But I still use eDonkey Network, and it’s healthy as hell, even as all projects are almost abandoned, as long as someone it’s using it you can share. The power of p2p

  • outhouseperilous@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    Torrenting makes me a part of a decentralized archive of all the linux iso’s i find beautiful, which i think is cool, and increases total access.

    Thats why they go after it. It’s kinda like torrenting is just tye first target, because it’s so democratized. If it falls, direct downloads are next, and they’re much less resilient.

  • iii@mander.xyz
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    1 day ago

    It helps build a decentralized network, usefull as most governments are turning further autocrat.

  • gonzo-rand19@moist.catsweat.com
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    1 day ago
    • DDL sites go down (like MegaUpload) whereas torrents often have multiple trackers
    • DDL sites often have download speed limits whereas torrents are only limited by peer upload speeds (which are usually pretty good)
    • DDL sites often have tons of ads or endlessly redirect you to farm clicks
    • Private trackers aren’t usually subject to takedowns or copyright notices because they’re selective in who can join
    • A lot of people live in countries where no one cares about getting caught or, when caught, nothing actually happens (like me)
    • generator@lemmy.zip
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      1 day ago

      Adding to this DDL store the content for a limited time. Some of the content after one week is almost impossible to find

      • zabadoh@ani.social
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        1 day ago

        It’s really frustrating to search for old hard-to-find videos, at long last find some forum post with a DDL link, then find out that the DDL was deleted by the host due to inactivity.

  • junusdenised420@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    1 day ago

    One thing i havent seen mentioned here yet is how easy it is to automate the download of tv shows and movies with torrents (and usenet) by using sonarr/radarr. Its a lot more convenient to just look up a show and select which seasons you want and have the rest done for you.

  • Wistful@discuss.tchncs.de
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    1 day ago

    Just a smoother and faster experience. No dead links, no slow downloads, no files that are separated into multiple parts…
    You get a VPN and you don’t have to worry about “getting caught”. Private trackers just further elevate that experience and get you access to better content.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      11 hours ago

      Also in this day and age getting a VPN and having it always on for general privacy enhancement, especially against snoopy governments (something which just keeps on getting worse), is also a good idea, plus it also lets you work around geographically restricted sites, so it ends up useful in multiple ways.

  • generator@lemmy.zip
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    1 day ago

    For me there’s no “get caught”, and many stuff are only available trough torrent, like some old/obscure movies (some could take a week to download), other only trough DDL like some UK TV shows.

    Also for automate software like Radarr/Sonarr you only have torrents or nbz

    • N0x0n@lemmy.ml
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      1 day ago

      KimDotCom was legend though ! It lasted longer than expected 🫠 but yeah multipart files from multiple upload sites with each their own limits… to much stuff to handle ! I’m glad I’m back in the torrent world even though I hate the gatekeeping going on in private trackers ^^

  • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
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    1 day ago

    Torrent is usually faster and it’s good at picking up halfway after an interruption. If a download fails, I have to start again from zero.

  • sag@ani.social
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    1 day ago

    Fast. I can fully use my 800 Mbps network while in DDL. It is usually capped at 40 or 60 Mbps. It has other downsides too like only being able to download one file at the same time or having a cooldown b/w download(which I am sure J2Downloader can fix that). I usually torrent or If I am in a hurry I just stream it from some good sites.

  • Omegamint [comrade/them, doe/deer]@hexbear.net
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    1 day ago

    Ups and downs of either. Honestly either you’re using something with a backend that’s relying on realdebrid or another debrid style service or you’re going all in on something like radar/sonarr. I use debrid atm because it was really easy to setup with my roommate and get him to use, but the reality is that it could fall apart at any moment whereas torrents will keep going. Not worried about getting trouble either way, honestly