Please seed !! Public torrents need your help

Hey all, I know a lot of people are migrating to private torrent sites, and OK, that's a choice. However there are still a lot of people on the public torrents who are just leeching and not seeding.

I have several popular (old/classic) movies in my feed that I have uploaded (literally) 1000x the original and many more in the several hundred times. That's fine, I choose to support the community, but it's pretty depressing when I look at the seeders count and those movies have 2 or 3 other seeders.

This only works if you share. Please don't cut off as soon as you've downloaded.

And on a personal note, if anyone has audio or video files for "Machine Gun Fellatio" also listed as MGF could you please start seeding in particular

"MGF Pack 1"

"MGF+Pack+2"

"MGF+Pack+3"

If I can get the download completed I'll keep them up permanently, but unfortunately as they are obscure/rare I'm getting nowhere.

Rules don't permit me showing the torrent link of course. DM if that would help

126 comments

Really! 😅 I hate the elitism, interviews, etc of private trackers, so even though I have the knowledge and seed constanly, I only download from public trackers, in order to seed content that will remain public and accessible by everyone
- I'm on IPT and TL and getting ratio on them took fucking forever. It's basically impossible to do via seeding because everything gets flooded with seeders instantly. Occasionally they have stuff I can't find elsewhere but I mostly use public ones. If I didn't have to maintain a ratio on the private ones to download I would be seeding so much more of their shit. IMO seeding time is a much better metric to use to enforce seeding than ratio.
  
  As a noobie, I've just downloaded a couple things I wanted that were also free leech coincidentally and then just kept seeding them. And now I have 515GB up and 87GB down. I know it's nothing excessive, but I'm really not a hard core torrent user. I just fill in gaps mostly, where I was not able to catch something in the theatre or on a stream.
  
  Can't confirm that.
  I have a 2TB seedbox and accumulated almost 20TB in upload by just being there and seeding about 40 releases. Mostly the Looney Tunes release.
  Not that difficult if you seed 24/7.
  At best my daily upload (excluding public) is around 25-75 GiB
- My, admittedly limited, experience with private trackers is pretty much the only time I have seen power tripping worse than Reddit mods.
- Yeah, private trackers really think they’re the best thing in the world, but Usenet is 10x better for half the effort. My current ratio is ~30:1 for public torrents, but I pretty much only use them on the rare occasion that Usenet is missing something. I honestly couldn’t give a fuck about private trackers when Usenet exists.
  
  Do you know any good Usenet guide out there? The ones I found were confusing, I don't even know how to start really
Also, seed to I2P trackers!! It's now possible with qBitTorrent.
- How do I do that ?
- Ah? One moment-
Hey all, I know a lot of people are migrating to private torrent sites, and OK, that's a choice. However there are still a lot of people on the public torrents who are just leeching and not seeding.
Effect. Cause.
I feel you. A few weeks ago I finished a 450GB torrent that had like 5 seeders all super slow and wouldn't even connect most of the time. It took over 7 month in total.
As another public only user, gotta emphasise this. I'm on a pretty quick fibre connection, so luckily it's not a bother for me to get really good ratios but every little helps folks!
Issue is that most people can't/don't know how to set up a vpn and a torrent program that will give more than like a 10Kb upload. So even if they aren't trying not to seed, they still aren't by default.
- Do you have a guide or do you mind explaining the best way to do this?
  
  https://protonvpn.com/support/bittorrent-vpn
  https://protonvpn.com/support/port-forwarding
- Please note that many countries don't give a fuck about private-use piracy, so in many cases you don't need a VPN.
- It's hard to do so when it seems like your seeding is never connecting to anyone...
After I've gotten 1gbit fiber I tend to try and hit ratio 1000:1 on anything I seed. Back when I was on xDSL connections before fiber, I tried to hit 1.1:1 because my thinking was if everyone tried to do that, there'd literally never be data loss.
I recently tried getting "The Sinking of the Laconia" miniseries and it took 8 days to get it. But I'm not member of a private tracker where it was available anyway, so sometimes public is better as long as one is patient.
- I've been seeding for over 3 years. I only have a torrent that got up to 980 of ratio, if I remember correctly
  
  EDIT: I am pretty happy about the one at 755 ratio. 78GB * 755 = 57TB. That alone is 35% of everything I've uploaded since I installed qBittorrent in February.
I would love to seed but I can never seem to get my client and network setup to do it with any torrent I've tried. I've attempted everything I can find online, across different ISPs, computer builds, and OS instances. Can't ever seem to get it working between all the different configurations.
Now I'm running a pfSense firewall on a FIOS connection, with Windows 10, and qBittorrent behind Proton VPN. Still haven't been able to get even freeleech torrents to seed. I've tried a lot of clients and ports over the years. I think it may be something I'm doing wrong!
- Maybe a dumb question, but have you enabled port forwarding in your torrent client and ensured that the VPN server you are connected to allows port forwarding? Proton has decent documentation on how to do this, but it's not obvious if you didnt already know you needed port forwarding.
  This had me tripped up for nearly a full year after I got back into torrenting.
  
  I appreciate the suggestion. I have followed their guides, set up Proton VPN with their torrent servers involving ports to forward. I updated that port in the client and it still just sits there, staring at me with a 0.3 seed rate. I keep them up for at least 30-days (to appease my private tracker's 2:1 seeds or 14-day offering) to no avail. I keep trying different things and just kind of accept it, for now. Maybe when I move to Linux as my daily driver I'll have better luck in that field!
- I've seen some people have issues with being able to punch qBittorrent through a VPN so that may be the first place to troubleshoot. Maybe Proton gatekeeps certain traffic? Other than that I can't help, sorry.
  
  Not a problem. I use IRC and Usenet (in the past) for most of my searches, but some things are too old to be on those and in any condition to work after download. Proton VPN provides specific servers for port forwards (maybe only on paid subs), but that makes no difference when I provide it to the client. The search for a fix continues!
- With paid sub, I believe, you can use Proton VPN with their torrent servers including ports they forward. It changes every time, however. I think it's just me and Windows. I think I'm nearing the time to switch my daily driver to Linux and, if successful, I'll move my server to a Linux distro soon after, as well!
- What @dmention7@lemm.ee wrote: qBittorrent can pretty easily punch a hole through your router if you can enable UPnP on it. Don't forget to enable it in qBittorrent as well, although I think it's on by default.
  If that's not an option, then you might have to spend a bit of time setting up port forwarding manually, which has always been a pain, but once you learn it, it's quite easy.
  
  Appreciate the comment. I'll confirm my uPnP settings in the firewall and client when I get home from work. I think they're both enabled and Proton VPN has the port forward so that isn't the hangup. This issue goes all the way back to my Limewire days, when torrents were just getting big and being targeted heavily by the RIAA and MPAA. I use IRC for most of my searches and only use torrents for hard to find things. I'd love to see stuff like Linux distros, the internet archives, and other seemingly important (legal) causes, if I can get them to work consistently.
  And I gotta say, I love the attempted support by you and others. Peace, love, and humptiness, forever!
Once I have a job I'm going to rent a seedbox for public trackers. Fuck DMCA!
- Why not build a seedbox for yourself?
  
  Bandwidth & speed, mostly
  I have fast internet for my area and they match my UL to my dl (a rarity) but my seedbox in the Netherlands had the capacity for 5x that bandwidth, meaning basically all of my torrents download lickety split and I'm usually high in the favored seeder list due to my connection, allowing me to quickly earn my ratio back
  
  Not a bad idea, all things considered. The only issue is that I would need collo space and a VPS in non-DMCA land. The hardware behind a seedbox shouldn't be that crazy anyways, just a lot of bandwidth and a lot of storage
I download an iso image via torrent, that a way to "seed"?
- I'm not sure why people downvoted instead of educating. To answer your question: no, it isn't. It has been awhile since I've used torrents, so this may be a little out of date, but typically, within your P2P client you'll have active "seeds," including while you're downloading. Some people immediately delete files from "active" after their download is complete. It is generally considered proper etiquette to leave the torrent active (at least) until it you have uploaded approximately 2x what you have downloaded. This helps keep torrents active and relatively quick, while not placing the bulk of the bandwidth burden on a few seeders.
  
  Also... Low seeder torrents. That'd a spot to shine if you got to prioritize. Main stream shit has a lot of turn over.
- You've had a good answer by letstakealook, but just to expand on one point, you need to leave your torrent application (qbittorrent or whatever) running in the background for an extended period. If you close the app and don't load it again after you've got the download then you're not seeding - seeding means to share it to others after you've finished downloading
I seed, but I'm behind a NAT I don't control without port forwarding, so I'm not a good seed.
Maybe I will do the seedbox VPS thing... after I get employed again.
I haven't tried it yet, but I've seen massive lists of trackers floating around that you can add to your torrents, in case the same torrent is indexed on other trackers, but the torrent file you downloaded doesn't know to search them.
- Yes absolutely, keeping your trackers up to date is important, they do expire
  https://newtrackon.com/list
  for example
  will give you an up to date list of live trackers to replace the dead ones with
  
  Thank you so much for sharing this link - and for the post! I appreciate you :)
My VPN doesn't allow port forwarding so I cannot seed. If anyone has advice to safely seed then I'm all ears. I've paid a long time ahead for my provider so I cannot switch.
- You can seed without port forwarding, it just means the other side needs to have it.
  Just keep your torrent client running and people will connect
  
  Yeah I don't know where get this notion that they can't seed without port forwarding.
- You don't absolutely need port forwarding to seed. As long as the other side has a port open you'll be able to upload to them.
- Also, are you sure you actually need a VPN? Most countries don't give a fuck about piracy.
Just this past week I coincidentally got my torrent box back up and behind a VPN. I'm actively looking for popular torrents in need of more seeders, especially those on private trackers worth building some seed cred on. Anyone got suggestions? I'm open to books, libraries, certain genres of anime, feature length movies, various commercial software, and large FOSS software.
- Transformers earthspark for one off the top of my head - my upload ratio is triple digits but there's never more than single digit seeders
magnet:?xt=urn:btih:2e9aa7e3b949238ed2db6cfc6f0f45a743a3bf54&dn=Machine%20Gun%20Fellatio%20[3%20Albums]
- Really appreciate the response, thank you. I do actually have those 3 albums (bought the CDs), I'm more chasing the rarer stuff. But that link will get added and seeded now
  
  Maybe take a look on soulseek and then reupload on public trackers.
How do I do that? It is extremely recently that I started using torrents.
- To keep things simple, they must be left in the same location as wherever the download client puts them, and the client stays open. I use an organiser and very useful tool called Radarr, it monitors your downloads and it lets you hardlink the video files once they've completed, which both allows the download client to keep seeding, and the media server you may use to keep using it.
  A hardlink involves some intimate knowledge of how storage works, it can be done manually but the best option is to let a program handle it for you. Note: To hardlink, the download location and media library location must be on the same storage device, and the Sonarr user must have write access to the downloaded file. For me, group write access didn't help. This way it will not duplicate storage.
  Generally, some areas and Internet Service Providers might crack down on torrenting of any sort, so using a VPN is a smart way to not get your IP noticed. My area's authority and ISP don't care, so I'm not too sure.
i'll keep seeding the new normal even though nobody wants it to get to my 1.0 ratio even if it takes me a million years
- Given it looks like you're the only seed (and a quick check on lime torrents only has 1 seed for the new normal s01 ep 1-22 (I assume that's the above ?) then yeah, you're the only one fighting the good fight ! Don't stop :-D
  EDIT
  Bollocks to bad search techniques - it seems there's about 4000 seeders for multiple different copies of it (the above version does indeed only have one though). I just thought "sod it, if there's only 1 seeder I'll help out". Went and looked again
  <sigh>
  Help not needed.
  
  yeah its "The.New.Normal.S01" i got it from a website that was a magnet link that's been around for 7 years with 44 files but i got it SUPER fast like less than an hour so i want to make it available for anyone else cause i loved the show and want others to have it too :3
i seed a lot. but don’t have port forwarding so limited impact sadly
For some reason torrents I downloaded from the archive seem to get the most seeding out of?
- Only one of the two sides needs a port open so I'm sure your seeding is contributing
  
  I think also NAT Hole punching is working well for me. To the point I don’t think getting port forwarding would be needed even if I could afford it.
You see, the problem is that radar and sonarr move my files into designated folders. That is a good thing, but it also makes it so that my download client can't find it again to continue uploading.
I have now set it up so that I keep a copy in my downloads folder for a week, but I don't have the space to permanently keep two copies of all my downloads.
It would be great if radarr could tell my download client where the file has moved to so that it can keep on seeding indefinitely.
- You can configure radarr and sonarr to use hard linking instead of moving the.
  
  Yes, but hardlinking doesn't work if the files aren't on the same petition.
  My downloads folder is on the main harddisk.
  \ The files are moved to an external ssd.
  
  I haven't gotten around to finishing my stack but i could've sworn that's the default behavior
  
  That only works if they’re on the same drive or petition.
My problem is that the file I download is not in the right format, doesn’t have any metadata embedded, doesn’t have subs embedded, and doesn’t match my file naming convention. In fact the way media is packaged, I don’t know how anyone that cares about these things is able to seed.
If I have had Radarr and Sonarr rename all my files and move them. Is it still possible to seed them? Do I need to package them as torrents again?
- Yes its possible, you can read the trash guide how to do it
  
  Thanks.
I try but it shows 0 active peers and doesn't upload.
- There is not always demand, you need to leave the torrent app running in the background when ever you have the PC on - then when someone wants it you'll get a connection.
Being behind CGNAT unfortunately my seeding is limited...
No, I don't like using a VPN with PF... If I spend money, I do for Usenet....
- Tell your ISP to opt you out of CGNAT.
  
  If they don't have the IPv4 addresses they can't. Could always ask about IPv6, have seen ISP's give out more than you'd ever need for a home LAN (like a /64).
  Edit - I should add, do make sure you have a setup firewall as you will no longer be "protected" by NAT and all the IPv6 addresses are routable to the open Internet.
  
  Yeah, I sure that would work, why didn't I thought of it sooner?
  No, here get a real public IP is not possible unless you get a much more expensive commercial non residential contract.
Unfortunately, I am behind CG-NAT, so it always barely uploads anything.
I wish it could work like WebRTC or Tailscale. There could just be servers like the trackers, but to help establish this direct connection between peers.
- Airvpn supports port forwarding. Well, other do too, but im only familiar with that one. I suggest you look into it; even just for privacy
I found an mgf torrent but it's all mp3. Were you looking for flac?
- MP3 is fine thank you
  I already have the well known albums (On Ice, Paging Mr Strike, Bring it on, Second Page for Mr Strike)
  
  There's a music video on the web archive. . NSFW
I always just let the open trackers roll
I have a seedbox and have been using private trackers for well over a decade. I seed forever, or until I need space.
When I cannot find something on one of my private trackers I do look on public trackers. I find the experience lacking.
My issues with public trackers:
Search sites are sketchy af. Between pop up ads and fake direct download links, it can be challenging to find whatever you are looking for.
Files can be poorly tagged or completely named wrong. The number of times I have downloaded not porn only to find porn can be counted on one hand, mostly because the other hand is busy.
Anyway, I will gladly seed until the end of time if a public torrent search site exists that can get me the content I want without making me need a shower after.
- Try rutracker, genuinely a excellent public tracker. Entirely in Russian but Google translate deals with that easily.
- Search sites are sketchy af
  Jackett solves that issue
You uploaded 3 copies to users and 997 copies to Chinese bandwidth waster bots.
- I wonder who seeds those.........
  Bro. You are the problem OP is ranting about.
- Selfish asshole
- I use a Debrid service and still go out of my way to get the torrent and seed 3-4x. The only reason I don't use the torrents directly is that Stremio is just quick and easy on the TV for now. Once I get a pi setup on my TV, I'll be torrenting and watching via that while I seed.
  Debrid is easy and convenient. That's it. However, I'm not a fan of Debrid, nor am I a fan of private tracker sites. Making something a paid service or a closed group invite only is, by definition, the complete opposite of what piracy is supposed to stand for. Leave that shit to capitalism, imo.
  Basically, private and paid anything is for the birds, man. I'm still out here torrenting on public like a real buccaneer. Do I pay for a VPN? Yes. Its a necessity, especially if I want to open a port and make sure every peer can get to me. Other than that, I don't want to pay for shit. The only payment I condone is seeding.

126 comments