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Is BitTorrent still relevant in the Modern Era?

Hello everyone,

I recently came across an article on TorrentFreak about the BitTorrent protocol and found myself wondering if it has remained relevant in today's digital landscape. Given the rapid advancements in technology, I was curious to know if BitTorrent has been surpassed by a more efficient protocol, or if it continues to hold its ground (like I2P?).

Thank you for your insights!

86 comments
  • I use Torrent daily, I basically never stop seeding what I download to my Plex Server and I also use a Real Debrid account, which essentially caches the torrents to their servers for us to stream through different methods (like Kodi, Stremio, or more recently for me Plex thanks to Riven/Zurg).

  • Yep I've been using it almost 2 decades with basically no slowdown, I have netflix which is bad enough and refuse to pay for any other streaming service so anything not on there I torrent, in addition to games a few times a year would be more because most large developers are trash but I not much of a gamer

    The extra time it takes to find a magnet launch my client and DL is worth the money saved, anything popular has enough seeders to DL quick and anything obscure enough not to have many seeders you probably wouldn't find on a premium service at all, as is the feeling of getting one over on atrocious companies and the sense of smug superiority over those paying for 5+ services and still can't watch everything they want

    It ain't going anywhere

  • When I want to pirate, torrenting is my go to. I don't do it very often, so I'm not really up-to-date on more modern methods. For some movies, I know there are those websites like 123movies or whatever. And I've used those. But Idek what additional methods there are anymore.

    That said, I've tried torrenting over I2P, but it's just slow. Not necessarily super slow, but obviously slower than doing it over the clearweb with a commercial VPN. Additionally it seems like there's less available content with torrenting over I2P. At least in the little experience I've had with it.

  • There are things like torrentio now which lend BitTorrent piracy a more integrated UX, and that has definitely extended the lifespan of its usefulness to me. Torrents rarely max out my line speed these days, mostly because I have 1000X the bandwidth compared to when I first started torrenting 20 odd years ago. But it's still one of the fastest and simplest methods to get any file you want, so I think it's relevant

  • The article you linked answers most of your questions.

    1. Relative global upstream traffic went down, but not due to other file-sharing protocols but entirely different applications
    2. I2P is not mentioned anywhere in the article, nor any other sharing alternative
    3. VPN is mentioned as a potential reason for not being able to identify torrent traffic; VPN has become much more prevalent and promoted in the scene
    4. The article says, in piracy, streaming websites are much more popular now

    It has not been surpassed by another protocol. The relative numbers don't say much about absolute numbers or usage.

    And 10 % of global internet upload is certainly no irrelevancy.

86 comments