this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
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i haven't used it, only read some available documentation, but it seems like a subscription service to access a server with stuff of dubious legality on it, but please correct me if i'm wrong. i kinda want to get into it but, as i was saying, i fail to see how it is better than torrenting
It’s better because it basically has everything that torrent sites have, since the same groups upload everything to both, but it’s all done over SSL encrypted connections so your ISP can’t see what you’re downloading, so you don’t need a VPN and you are downloading directly from servers so it’s much faster and you don’t have to worry about the number of seeders, nor do you have to seed yourself. You have many different providers you can sign up to, and many different indexers to help find what you are looking for. It also can download parts of the same content from different sources and combine them to make a whole.
Once you’ve tried it, torrenting feels so amateur and insecure and outdated. Ideally you just set up both, which is what I have done with transmission running in a docker container with a built in VPN, but the torrents are the “last resort” when the content I want can’t be found on Usenet - which is very rarely.
Doesn't this also mean that the server can be a single point of failure? Whereas in a torrent swarm it's distributed and more resilient?
It's not like it's just some server in some persons house. They're hosted by companies on server farms that have guaranteed uptime figures and most have 2000+ day retention of data. I've been using it for 10+ years and have never had any server failure type issues.
I was thinking more about legal actions. But then again torrents need trackers and search sites. It seems like it's hard to shut down pirate bay though. I just have a feeling that usenet flies under the radar a bit, but if it became mainstream, it might be easier to shut down a server than a shifting swarm of peers?