When it comes to movies/shows, I generally just trust the listing; there's no real risk, particularly as I'm not a quality whore.
For games/programs, I'll mostly just check the download page to ensure it's from a verified, trustworthy group.
Mostly though, I've never felt the need to be as paranoid as some people suggest one must be when torrenting; despite doing this for 20+ years, I've not had any incidents since I was about 12 years old.
They all do have auto firing things that would not necessarily show on a screenshot. It's a cat and mouse game between these sites and filter maintainers.
But even for those I recommend the popup blocker strict extension.
This a good point but, do you browse torrent sites? There are much better tools available these days, than torrent sites. I mean, it was always the case that Usenet was quicker but even with that, there's options available such as the *Arr stack.
I might be misremembering, but wasn't YIFY/YTS known for their awful quality ultra compressed releases? I thought they closed down many years ago tho, so no idea if they are the same people or if they still focus on low-quality releases.
Yeah, it did shut down :( Ever since, I haven't really found an English-speaking replacement. Rutracker has the absolute majority of what I need but doesn't have some newer American children's cartoons that I used to get from Rarbg. For example, one show had full seasons on Rarbg, but only individual episodes on 1337 (of which none are from the newest season), and Rutracker only has the first two seasons, only with a TV dub and in a horrific quality :/