I’m a pretty heavy torrent user, running a media server complete with sonarr/radarr for automatic downloads. I download a lot, and have multiple TBs of upload on various private trackers. I’ve been torrenting forever, but I’ve always wondered about usenet. Over and over on this, and other, forums I see people saying that usenet is way better - but why?

I understand what it is overall, but what makes it better than traditional torrenting? In my mind, it’s always just seemed like a different means to the same end. I pay for a VPN and torrent for “free”, or I pay for usenet access and download directly from there. As someone who’s “snobby” around the quality of the stuff I torrent, does usenet provide an advantage there?

Usenet fans, I’d love to hear what makes you love it! I’m always open to trying new things, and if It really is better I’d love to know why! (Plus, maybe what providers/tools etc you recommend).

  • underisk@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    9
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    They’re essentially direct downloads and some services have retention that’s goes back quite a while so you don’t have to worry as much about a lack of seeders. Since it’s not peer to peer the downloads are more consistent and consistently fast. ISPs don’t (yet) police Usenet traffic the same way they do torrenting. Since you’re not seeding anything back you aren’t technically breaking any (US) laws.

    I don’t generally use either torrenting or usenet lately, though, so someone else could probably do a better job of this. The last time I used usenet was around 10 years ago and torrenting around 3. And I only used torrenting because it was easy to set up on Kodi with Seren.