[thefurdrake]

I don't spend any time on shady websites with scams, ads, and viruses, and I surf the high seas for video content with regularity. It's very easy to do safely, and in this day and age, it beggars belief that this comment was made in good faith.

Stop spreading misinformation.

[ygjb]

It's not really misinformation though. Most vuln researchers aren't burning browser 0-days targetting pirates, but many piracy sites host malicious content, even if that content isn't looking to deliver malware through browser vulnerabilities.

There is a significant segment of the internet that thrives in the gutters between paid services, straight up piracy sites, and actual "dark web" sites that require TOR or other specialized access. The restreamers that live in those gutters are questionable at best, straight up illegal at worst, and fund themselves through fraudulent ads, or legit ads for sketchy or dangerous services and sites.

It is entirely possible to use those sites safely, just like it's also possible to navigate dark alleys in major urban centres in the late hours, but that doesn't make it a low-risk activity.

[thefurdrake]

I don't navigate any dark alleys in order to perform piracy. I pay a service to host/run torrents, and I browse the available torrents through their associated torrent aggregator.

The only danger involved here is in the actual downloaded content. There have been a few codec/filetype vulns for video files in the past, sure, but one that deploys through the browser through a local Plex instance would be pretty interesting, to say the least.

[speedgoose]

Please share the websites because I never found them.

[thefurdrake]

Am I allowed to share links to piracy websites on HN or are you baiting to get me banned?

[speedgoose]

I don’t know, it doesn’t seem to be mentioned explicitly in the guidelines but if you don’t want to risk your account I can understand.

[thefurdrake]

Well. I am sure you can do some googling (not as an asshole response). The service I use does torrent de-duplication, so if some other user has already downloaded that torrent, you receive it immediately instead of waiting, and you get $x size of cloud storage for the output.

They have an associated aggregator that has no ads on it, it's just a search bar and "What can we hook you up with?".

I pay $20 a month for it. Some may question what the point of paying for a torrenting service is, instead of paying the streaming sites. However, I used to pay for netflix and prime video, and I only went BACK to torrenting after things started happening to enshitify the product (like struggling to get full res videos because I run linux). The answer is simple: Ease of access.

[throwaway742]

PTP, BTN, HDB