iOS users have plenty of options here too

• AdGuard Pro (paid)
• AdGuard DNS (free)
• other free dns blockers - NextDNS, ControlID etc
• Safari addons
• browsers with blocking built in (eg brave)
• VPNs with ad blockers built in

DNS and VPN blocks will work on most apps and all browsers.

I prefer Asguard dns and then Safari extension or Brave

Well, the sub had gone downhill recently anyway - endless memes or posts about 'what is seeding' 'what is a vpn' 'what is plex' or just idiots who got an ISP notice and think it means they are going to jail.

There's often a lot of bad information about VPNs which is never backed up with any actaul evidence.

Sure, you have to make sure its working properly and bound to your torrent client, but if it is, then that's enough to protect you from copyright claims.

There is no evidence of any commerical VPN provider ever responding to a copyright notice. People mistakenly think this, when all that's really happened is they were not connected properly and their ISP got the notice direct. There is no situation where the copyright troll contacts the VPN provider, find the real user, then somehow makes the ISP send a notice to them. Doesn't even make sense.

Yeah but most of them *haven't *learned - how to search, how to follow instructions, how to read, how to seed, how to install and adblocker, how not to get malware....

Exactly - snd yet people still claim their 'VPN ratted them out' - it didn't - it might hve failed, or the user never turned it on, but the VPN provider didn't get a copyright notice from Disney and forward it an ISP.

• they are properly moderated so no fake torrents or malware (and anyone trying to upload those is immediately banned)
• many have rules about formats, nfo files - another guarantee that your file is what it says it is
• duplicates are not usually allowed - eg if an album already exists in FLAC format, you can’t upload another one
• ratio requirements mean people almost always seed, and many use seed boxes which means speed is much faster. Movies download to my seed box in a couple of seconds typically.

It’s not about a media player ‘attempting to execute random code’ - an exploit is found which lets it run a command that it shouldn’t. You used to be able to jailbreak phones by loading a .pdf file that used an exploit to gain root privileges and execute code. It wasn’t a feature of the PDF reader. It was a bug that could be exploited when a specific string of characters was entered to effectively crash the pdf reader and let it run its own code instead.

A txt could easily contain malware - any file could.

I pay for family spotify - we all use it a lot and the Daily Mixes, Release Radar, Discover Weekly playlists are unbeatble. I've used Tidal, Deezer, Youtube music before but their playlist creation is nowwhere near as good.

However I do download from Deemix as a backup . For me 128kbp is totally fine for what I need - yes its not the highest quality, but through bluetooth speakers in the car or bluetooth headphones it sounds absolutely fine for me. It might not be CD quality, but its better than broadcast radio, which is perfectly good enough for me.

Much prefer to use FOSS where I can.

Most people absoljutely do not 'need' photoshop or MS Office, but are too lazy to try out free alternatives. Sure they don't offer 100% of the features, but for most home users they are more than enough What are people using Word for at home anyway? Creating a CV once every few years - its not like they are knocking out documents day after day.

We don’t - but the risk is minuscule compared to windows. The actual chance of finding some working Linux malware in the wild is practically zero.

I bought it and runs and looks great - only thing is, I got bored about 1/3 of the way in - its very repetitive.

because idiots need somewhere to ask 'what exactly is seeding' for the 100th time

This is silly - the delivery medium is irrelevant.

Effectively, there is no benefit

Much faster download speeds, no malware, no fakes, no transcoded rubbish - there are plenty of benefits!

The downside is you typically have to maintain an upload ratio, which can be very hard to achieve without a seedbox.

That's not a downside - the whole point is to promote seeding. Rent a seedbox for £5 a month and fill it with freeleech torrents and let it seed before you dive into downloading and you should easily be able to build a healthy ratio.

For piracy purposes its irrelevant. The VPN provider won't send you a complaint or give your details to a copyright troll. If you are hiding from the governement then maybe its a different story, but a copyright holder doesn't have the ability to force a VPN to do anything.

your ISP cannot spy on what you’re doing.

ISPs dont monitor torrents, they just pass on complaints from copyright trolls. ISPs have no interest in inspecting your torrent traffic and have always resisted any attempts to make them do so.

Communities

People say IPT does this it I’ve been a member for 10 years + and never had this. Never paid a penny. The key is to build a buffer - my ratio is some thing 8:1. Don’t donate, use the money to pay for a seed box, add some big free leech torrents (game packs, tv packs are usually solid choices) and just seed them forever. Free leech won’t impact your download total but will add your seed ratio.

What a lot of new users do is go crazy, build a massive ratio deficit and can never recover.

They might put it at 20% off maybe