this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2025
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

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[–] Mondez@lemdro.id 130 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

If it keeps newcomers from making mistakes in client choice it looks like a good thing to me?

[–] rijom@lemmy.ml 13 points 3 weeks ago (4 children)

But is the statement correct? What’s the story behind uTorrent?

[–] unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de 122 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

μTorrent, or uTorrent (see pronunciation), is a proprietary adware BitTorrent client owned and developed by Rainberry, Inc.

That should be enough for any sane person. A proprietary bittorrent client is the worst joke i have heard in a while.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9CTorrent

[–] lord_ryvan@ttrpg.network 21 points 3 weeks ago

An adware whatever should also be avoided.

[–] aislopmukbang@sh.itjust.works 68 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Yes. It stopped being good around 2010-2012 depending on who you ask. Unfortunately there are still plenty of old blog posts praising it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9CTorrent

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[–] banghida@lemm.ee 51 points 3 weeks ago

The parent company, bittorrent Inc got purchased by a serial crypto scammer Justin Sun at some point.

In March 2022, the SEC charged Rainberry with fraud for selling cryptocurrencies Tronix (TRX) and BitTorrent (BTT) as unregistered securities.

I think the SEC dropped all charges recently because the literal US government got on the payroll of Tether Inc, which basically runs the crypto show. Justin is just one of the appendages to the scheme.

[–] American_Jesus@lemm.ee 46 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

After uTorrent was brought by BitTorrent Inc, they started releasing new shady versions, first added ads then released uTorrent bundle with crypto mining software without user consent

https://torrentfreak.com/new-utorrent-release-breaks-ties-with-bitcoin-miner-150413/

[–] RedSnt@feddit.dk 24 points 3 weeks ago

They speedran the enshittification process, so quickly the term wasn't even invented yet.

[–] DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca 112 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Took long enough. uTorrent has been cancerous for a long time now.

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 60 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)
[–] DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I honestly couldn't say how long. I know I was late to the party on knowing what was going on but even I moved on from it a long time ago now.

[–] kusivittula@sopuli.xyz 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

i used utorrent until a few years ago when i started caring enough to switch. old habit, like over 15 years ago when my mom taught me how to pirate, utorrent was good back then. don't know why i kept using it for that long, i even had to block ads in it by editing the hosts file...

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[–] Jeef@sh.itjust.works 73 points 3 weeks ago

didn't realize people were still using utorrent. been at least a decade since it was decent

[–] RedSnt@feddit.dk 58 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Only a decade late.. Luckily qBittorrent is brilliant. And if qBittorrent somehow wasn't an option, I might go with BiglyBT - it's not the easiest on the eyes, but lots of settings.

[–] _cryptagion@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 weeks ago

To be fair, if you set up a Servar stack, you should already know enough not to use utorrent.

[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 37 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

uTorrent's brand recognition is crazy, it's been crap for years and it still the name people who don't torrrent often recognize.
Nice change, good to steer the novices away from that junk.

[–] ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 3 weeks ago

It’s so ubiquitous that for about a second I thought wait what I thought that was the good one until I remembered that I’ve been using qBittorrent for a decade.

For a time, it just was the client.

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 36 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Transmission has never let me down.

[–] LodeMike@lemmy.today 7 points 3 weeks ago

Its Single-threaded

[–] ookiiBoy@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 3 weeks ago

True. Sometimes it's weird about packed files, and cleaning up after itself. Still worth it.

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[–] Andromxda@lemmy.dbzer0.com 35 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (4 children)

Has anyone even used uTorrent in the last decade?

Edit: Apparently, unfortunately, yes

[–] TriflingToad@sh.itjust.works 26 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

you would not believe how common it is. It's like making a class of highschoolers take a colorblindness test. There's always ONE who had no idea

sidenote, it's really sad how the education system won't even spend 10 minutes a year to diagnose something that effects millions of children. There's FREE websites that they can just open on their board or projector

[–] charade_you_are@sh.itjust.works 18 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I remember on Reddit I'd see like a post a month from some uneducated pirate person asking how to fix a utorrent issue. It was fun watching them try to justify using it with all the other legit, updated clients. It didn't ever go well for the OP.

[–] Emmie@lemm.ee 6 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

I mean if they want to use it despite being told the state of things then who cares? There’s nothing to win here, it’s their pc

I couldn’t care less if someone on the internet sabotages their files because they want to be right 100% of time

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[–] nova_ad_vitum@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 weeks ago

I used 2.2.1 well into the last decade. Every version after that was either pointless or full of some sort of malware.

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[–] Kazumara@discuss.tchncs.de 30 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I thought people either used the old 2.2.1 version or jumped ship. Had no idea it was still going.

[–] Grostleton@lemm.ee 10 points 3 weeks ago

Same, I was under the impression that this was fairly common knowledge, but it's good to have it openly announced by some authority on the matter.

[–] merthyr1831@lemmy.ml 22 points 3 weeks ago

If uTorrent has no haters, I am dead

[–] RxBrad@infosec.pub 19 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (6 children)

I've always used Transmission, since there's a Docker container I use that bakes in your VPN-of-choice & a killswitch.

https://haugene.github.io/docker-transmission-openvpn/

That said, it looks like it hasn't been updated in over a year... I wonder if there's anything else out there that does the same thing as this. (EDIT: Yes. Google brings up plenty of choices.)

[–] communism@lemmy.ml 11 points 3 weeks ago

You can set qBittorrent to only use a certain interface, and set that to the wireguard interface of your VPN.

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[–] IrateAnteater@sh.itjust.works 17 points 3 weeks ago (5 children)

Do people still use transmission? That seems like be the default one I see in prebuilt torrent server containers.

[–] DebatableRaccoon@lemmy.ca 10 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (2 children)

It's not bad but it's pretty bare. A lot of people like their bells and whistles these days.

Edit: Changed the wording to be less broad for all the "But I..." specials.

[–] Quill7513@slrpnk.net 15 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

speak for yourself. if it's pretty bare, it just moved to the top of my list

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[–] foster@lemmy.hangdaan.com 11 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

Transmission's minimal features is what I like about it.

[–] moody 7 points 3 weeks ago (7 children)

Does Transmission let you force the use of a specific connection?

For example, qBittorrent lets you choose your VPN as its only allowed connection so that you can't accidentally use your regular network when not connected to the VPN.

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[–] aislopmukbang@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 weeks ago

There are other options such as qbittorrent or deluge though I would not recommend deluge due to IP leaks and it hasn't been updated since 2022

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[–] zabadoh@ani.social 12 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

There's a migration program to transfer torrents from utorrent to qbittorrent.

https://forum.qbittorrent.org/viewtopic.php?t=3224

I remember using it way back when, and they've kept it updated.

[–] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 5 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Isn't it as simple as exporting all torrents as .torrent files, importing them in qB, then pointing qB to the same downloads folder?

[–] ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org 9 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Some people have torrents across various directories or even renamed files in them (yes, it's possible and useful for crossseeding between trackers with different naming schemes). Of course, this makes migration way more difficult.

[–] ctkatz@lemmy.ml 5 points 3 weeks ago

if I still downloaded directly to my local drive, I'd use utorrent BUT only the 2.2.1 version. it's been at least 4 years since I've done that due to a lack of having a functional laptop so I've been out of downloading stuff that way for years, but even then I knew that modern utorrent was bad. I actually stopped using any new version once bittorrent bought it.

[–] Ohh@lemmy.ml 4 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

I'll be the one: use rtorrent

[–] uis@lemm.ee 3 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

ruTorrent)))

Скачал? Раздавай!

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