I keep seeing in forums and sites like these that say it's frowned upon to not seed torrents that you use/used. I saw a post on here or Reddit (I don't remember) with a guy ecstatic that someone started seeding his download he had been trying to get done for months. I know seeding lets someone download something using your computer but how is it helpful if someone doesn't have a site and/or isn't "in-range" ?

If you can't tell, I don't know much about how torrenting works other than how to download something using one. I hope that you all can just explain or point me in the right direction because I would like to support the community.

  • viking@infosec.pub
    ·
    3 months ago

    Please just make sure you use a VPN, if your understanding of the technology is so limited.

  • bdonvr@thelemmy.club
    ·
    3 months ago

    With a traditional download, examplesite.com sends a file to your computer, that's it.

    With torrents, instead of that you download little pieces of the file from many different computers. Sometimes hundreds of different computers. Then once you've downloaded the file you can then start sharing pieces to other people downloading. The more people doing this, the faster the downloads will be for everyone else and the less strain it will put on each computer's Internet connection.

    Also if not many people are seeding, there's a danger that the file will have 0 seeders and nobody can download it at all.

    This is also why torrenting is good for privacy. Shutting down one website isn't so hard. Shutting down hundreds of random personally owned computers is very hard.

  • Noah@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    hexagon
    ·
    3 months ago

    Hey everyone! I saw the comments and they were all very helpful. I just had no idea how torrents worked lol. I will be sure to do my part and I hope anyone with similar curiosity can also benefit from this post! Feel free to say your piece but note that I get the gist of it now.

  • leanleft@lemmy.ml
    ·
    3 months ago

    better to keep track of a ton of torrents and seed the ones that go completely dead

    • keepcarrot [she/her]
      ·
      3 months ago

      I am keeping some torrents alive and have mad seed ratios on some of them. If it goes under five seeds and I've downloaded it.

      To OP, the more seeds a torrent has, the easier it is for everyone to download it, and the less each seeder has to contribute. Think of it as a sort of giving back to the community.

      Obviously, the latest episode of popular TV show doesn't need your help, but obscure bits of media can actually die out. Or stuck at the same 40% for months.

      Since the files are just kept on everyone's computer, if no one has that file while online, no one can download it. No central file repository.

        • catloaf@lemm.ee
          ·
          3 months ago

          How much you've downloaded compared to how much you've uploaded. If it's equal, it's 1.0. If you've uploaded twice as much as you've downloaded, it's 2.0.

          • Noah@lemmy.dbzer0.com
            hexagon
            ·
            3 months ago

            I don't know how to create them, just share them. Is there anyway I could find out how to create a torrent file?

        • keepcarrot [she/her]
          ·
          3 months ago

          Mid-hundreds. idk, way higher than I was getting for forgetting to delete random game of thrones episodes