Some time ago I gave up using sonarr & radarr to watch (popular) tv shows and movies because the search just stopped giving decent results. Now I heard that rarbg has also quit.
Rarbg is a PITA with its random rate limiting. I wish they'd let me sign up and get an API key (Even if that meant paying for it) because I'd rather have rarbg than rely on whatever arse trackers I have the time and energy to sign up for.
I know people say "oh just get private trackers" but it's so much effort, especially when my piracy philosophy is that it should be as painless as possible to access content. I just want to get a tracker's info, add it to Prowlarr, and start downloading. The requirement of posting and becoming a community member when I deal with my seedbox/prowlarr setup once every couple of months (if that) is far too labour-intensive imo.
Freeleach filters, and re-seeding for the minimum amount of time is a great way to handle private trackers though. Yes, still more work than public trackers, but you generally get access to stuff that’s harder to find if you’re into them, and download speeds are generally faster.
Nothing wrong with how the leeching system works on privates. I quite like it, in fact. It's just that private trackers are very often a "who you know" kind of affair and that requires sitting in IRC, forums etc. which is something I can't justify doing on the random chance I spot a tracker doing signups.
Any private trackers that do have open signups seem to have too few users to keep new content coming through at a decent pace. I use DigitalCore, for example, and a lot of their content is just nonexistent compared to RarBG (RIP) with less seeders on anything that isn't brand new, and the only new stuff is usually concentrated on stuff already seeded ad nauseam on public trackers.
It's a shame RarBG went kaput because their system was fine... when it worked.