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by shelled 703 days ago
> That's why private trackers are the best

After almost a decade on private trackers (used to carefully ensure to seed from my laptop even in college when I didn't have much Internet hours or home connection during my early career as it was too costly) and remaining a model citizen I was finally banned by admin(s) of a top tracker for "suspected" fraudulent activities or cheating. That is it. Suspected and banned. Suspected where? On an unrelated social media site because I respectfully criticized a tracker.

When people say private trackers are by teens or (wo)man-teens with extremely fragile egos I always thought it was nuts until I came across some. They are really trigger happy and touchy.

I made peace with it. Slowly let all go of all the accounts. Just let it be. I first thought I will reach out to them for a/c deletions etc, but then I thought it was not worth it. Besides it's all a "seedbox dump" (I had one during my last 5-6 years there, so yeah I am guilty as well) and there's no community. Hoard and seed and hoard and seed and no talking about it and if you talk you always have to walk on egg shells. So it has not been the same. Not since the days of WCD; and that too is a maybe.

1 comments

Just because you had a shitty private tracker experience doesn't mean they're all bad. Similarly just because a SO from a past relationship broke your heart an betrayed your trust, doesn't mean relationships are bad and will result in the same outcome as yours. YMMV can't be overstated. I'm sure some are toxic, but plenty are not.

I'm on 3 private ones and the content and the communities are great and never got banned or had any issues. I just kept my head down, stayed under the radar, kept chats and interactions to a minimum and only on content topics, and it was smooth sailing for over 10 years.

Basically I treat the trackers only as places to upload and download and that's it, not as places for social interactions like Reddit or HN, as that's where diverging opinions and egos can clash and you can can find yourself banned due to sensitive members abusing the flag button or touchy mods. Similarly how I wouldn't start religious or political debates at work or hit on women there, the risk is too high to offend someone and the rewards basically non existent. It's not worth it. Keep social interaction only on social media, and trackers only for piracy, without mixing them together, and you'll be good.

I was sharing my experience and from supposedly one of my best. This was my experience. In my experience the experience was shitty or bad as you take it. Are you sharing an empirical study on it? No, you are not.

> Keep social interaction only on social media, and trackers only for piracy, without mixing them together, and you'll be good.

In case it didn't hit home last time: it was not there that I posted or communicated and the ban was based on guess work, there was no possible way to connect the two sites - none so whatsoever. At one place there was no email shared and entirely different username. IPs, yes. And even then I was not being abusive or so. I just disagreed. No, I had not shared my account usernames or so in the past at all!

Anyway, cheers. Have fun there. Those places are actually not bad when you have the time and patience to navigate through that and also keeping the head down. Good luck.