Some trackers solve this by having certain torrents not count towards your download, only towards upload. Usually older torrents, or those in need of being seeded.

This, coupled with other rules, such as that you need to seed a torrent at least X amount of time after finishing it, helps to maintain a healthy site.

I know from using myanonamouse that you only need to seed for about 3 weeks after downloading to satisfy their rules, I think they artificially grant you an upload amount of whatever you downloaded.

You can buy upload credit with seeding bonus on some trackers, and there are nearly always freeleech downloads that don’t count against your downloads, but do count for uploads. It’s usually quite easy to maintain a ratio.

In practice this is less of a concern for a few reasons:

- They often designate items as "freeleech," which means that downloading does not cost you ratio, but uploading still credits you.

- They often provide free credits at various times, especially for new members.

- They tend to have a soft cap, so the automated warning systems don't even start until users dip below 0.9-0.95.

- As much as these sites have, there is always something they don't have, and providing it will get you a relatively high share of the total upload.

Bear in mind that the primary driver for the site is ensuring access to everything that is available.

Almost every private tracker has a bonus point system: you are awarded bonus points for seeding (usually non-linearly, where the longer you seed the more points you earn for that torrent per hour) and can exchange them for upload credit.

There's also often various situations where downloading a file costs less for you than the upload credit it gives to others. Most commonly this is via freeleech where a download is not credited (but the corresponding upload credit still is awarded).

I would say that maintaining ratio is not actually a big deal these days in the world of private trackers writ large. These days bandwidth is cheap, storage is (or used to be) cheap, the communities are older and more long term oriented. On many of the best trackers the ratio system is essentially symbolic. RED (from the OP) is a notable exception and one of the only notable trackers where maintaining a ratio actually requires some work--their ratio system is much closer to zero sum.

For MAM specifically, FTA:

> Also they give you credit for seeding as long as you keep the file available, which is very generous. (Most other places count seeding the standard way, which means your upload number only goes up when someone else actually grabs file pieces from you. This can make it difficult to maintain "ratio" - for your uploads to be equivalent or higher than your downloads.)

In practice, my "real" ratio (the actual uploaded bytes / downloaded bytes) is 0.2, but after my credits it is 7.0 (far above the recommended 2.0). It's basically impossible to not meet the ratio requirement for MAM if you're putting a small amount of thought into it.

Other trackers have different rules. On TorrentLeech for instance, every torrent above 10 GB in size is "FreeLeech" (doesn't count as a download). Since that site is intended for movies, TV, and games (which are usually always above 10 GB in size anyway) it basically means you never have to worry about ratio.

I am not on RED but I imagine most people use automation software like autobrr to "race" (to download a new torrent as quickly as possible after creation so everyone else has to download from you).

Torrent trackers. Basically the index that let's your search for and find torrents, private ones are invite only. Common for rare music or better sources of films, and so on.

A "private tracker" is basically a speakeasy for media piracy.

It's BitTorrent, so it's peer-to-peer, but it's exclusive and secretive to avoid letting in surveillance bots that get everyone threatening letters from their ISPs.

Not that stupid, considering the word Torrent doesn't appear above the fold. Took me a while to figure out as well.