Bitmagnet Allows People to Run Their Own Decentralized Torrent Indexer Locally * TorrentFreak
torrentfreak.com
With Bitmagnet, people can run their own private and decentralized BitTorrent index, relying on DHT and the BEP51 protocol.
  • infeeeee@lemm.eeEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    Unlike well-moderated torrent sites, Bitmagnet adds almost any torrent it finds to its database. This includes mislabeled files, malware-ridden releases, and potentially illegal content. The software tries to limit abuse by filtering metadata for CSAM content, however.

    There are plans to add more curation by adding support for manual postings and federation. That would allow people with similar interests to connect, acting more like a trusted community. However, this is still work in progress.

    I think it’s not ready for mainstream use yet, but seems absolutely promising. This will be the most important, how they will solve this without a central authority. Here in the Fediverse admins are basically this authority, I can’t imagine how it could work in a true P2P fashion.

    • mgdigital@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      The DHT is basically the wild west - EVERYTHING is on there (but that is also the power of it). Bitmagnet is attempting to overlay some order on it, make it more easily usable, and automatically filter the truly harmful content. Once the core features are more fleshed out, chapter 2 will hopefully look more like a fediverse with curation and moderation. There’s still lots to be done but it’s getting there!

    • deluxeparrot@thelemmy.clubEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      Exactly. Torrents are popular because of the moderation and curation the indexers perform. It’s why it essentially won over purely distributed competitors.

      It won’t take much to create some fake swarms that make this tool useless.

  • Norgur@kbin.social
    0·
    10 months ago

    Anything that ends the bullshit one has to put up with with private trackers is a boon

  • Bakkoda@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    0·
    10 months ago

    I ran this for about a month when it was first linked on here. It’s pretty impressive. I did no performance tuning. Size of the install got a little worrying but i think there’s a lot of options to adjust this and i was not ready to put this on block storage yet.

    I’ll probably give it another shot later down the road.

    • mgdigital@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      0·
      10 months ago

      4 months in my database takes up around 50GB; for the size of a few hi-res movies it’s worth it for me…

      • summerof69@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        10 months ago

        How’s it better than Jackett that is scanning public trackers? Can you find something you wouldn’t find otherwise? I understand the problem Bitmagnet tries to solve, but to me the problem is rather hypothetical than real.

        • mgdigital@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
          0·
          10 months ago

          Can you find something you wouldn’t find otherwise?

          Yes, quite a lot of content that’s otherwise difficult to find on the public trackers. Also public trackers can be shut down.