One of the best private trackers out there. Sorry to see it go… You can read the reasons why in the link (in Romanian and English).

UPDATE: it’s no longer shutting down:

We were overwhelmed by your wishes and messages!

You know that over the years, I’ve always said that the community has a significant voice. Your words have always mattered, and we’ve never been indifferent to them. Your voice has been heard, even now.

I am delighted to announce that the website will not be shutting down! Donations are now reactivated, so everything is returning back to normal.

One of the founders of the website, God, is back and will take over the technical aspect to ensure the site continues to thrive. He is trustworthy, loyal, and things will certainly go well from this point of view. However, we also needed someone to take care of the other aspects of the work. From now on, Oana will handle everything related to the staff, server payments, and all the internal matters that a SysOp does. She will get promoted to the SysOp class. She is more than capable and competent to maintain control and ensure that everything runs smooth internally. Congratulations!

Together, they will continue the necessary work to keep this website alive.

That being said, this announcement will be my last. I, EboLLa, am permanently retiring from the community. I want to personally thank you all for all the private messages and wishes you’ve sent me. There have been so many, and I genuinely appreciate them from the bottom of my heart. You are all wonderful, and I appreciate each and every one of you! I am and have been honored that I could contribute to your well-being! To all of you. Farewell and take care! :love:

So let’s wish Oana and God best of luck!

With love and appreciation, EboLLa

    • calm.like.a.bomb@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Dear ones, I’m sorry to have to make this announcement, but this is where our tracker comes to an end. It is important that you understand and accept this decision. Although it was a difficult one, it was taken after careful evaluation and for good reasons.

      Unfortunately, I no longer have the time to run the site. A site like this requires quite a lot of commitment and my priorities in everyday life have changed in recent years. Time is the most precious resource for all of us and I have invested enough time here.

      I wanted to leave the site to someone else, who would take care of the community in the future, but unfortunately I don’t have anyone to leave it to. ToXiC, the one who was going to take my place is no longer with us.

      This is quite the responsibility, we have a large number of users who also have sensitive data that cannot be left in anyone’s hands. Abuses can be made and whoever has absolute power can decide anything regarding everything related to the community, so obviously a reliable, capable person is needed who also has very advanced technical knowledge to ensure the security of our users and proper functioning of the site. It is quite difficult to find such a person who is integrated here and shares the same values and has the same dedication that you have enjoyed for the last 16 years.

      I decided that the best thing to do is to close the site rather than risk something like this. I’m truly sorry, I’ve also put a lot of work into this and I’ve always had the community at heart.

      As a SysOp I thank you for your active involvement in our community. I deeply appreciated the valuable contributions, the passion you brought and the effort you put in. FileList would not be what it is today without the involvement of all of you!

      What happens from now on? From this moment on, donations are closed and the amount we have covers expenses for the next 2-3 months. During this time you can still enjoy the site, download what you need from here and post your goodbye message in the thread. After ~3 months, sometime around January 2024, the site will be closed permanently.

      With love and appreciation, EboLLa

  • highduc@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Can’t believe it. And so “sudden” - though not really, they did give months of warning in advance, but I still wasn’t expecting it. My account is from October 2008 :)

    It’s not a perfect tracker. Even this week I was mildly frustrated with a torrent that wasn’t seeded much, but it was good enough for me not to bother with many accounts anywhere else.

    Don’t know where to go on next. Please leave suggestions if you know anybody taking in refugees :)

    • whereBeWaldo@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      TorrentLeech seems to do so but on their announcements they mention giving the uploaders on FileList the “uploader” rank on TorrentLeech. I don’t know if they are also accepting regular users from there.

      • Nollij@sopuli.xyz
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        1 year ago

        FWIW, TL is already borderline “open”. They have open registration several times per year, often including one at the end of the year.

      • highduc@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Thanks for the suggestion. I already have an account there and use it from time to time, but I’m considering joining 1 or 2 more trackers if possible, just to have as backup.

        • VonReposti@feddit.dk
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          1 year ago

          Aither is a good choice these days too. It may be harder to join without an invite right now, but the quality is worth it.

  • ram@bookwormstory.social
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    1 year ago

    It’s always sad to see a good resource go away but it sounds like this was the right choice. Hopefully all the content there’s distributed on other trackers so at least that’s not lost.

    • ginerel@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      This was a Romanian tracker, and it was pretty much the most popular one (or at least that I know of), so I am pretty sure there was a lot of local content as well. Movies also always had Romanian subtitles IIRC, so it was a great source for anyone not having a really good English comprehension to fiddle around.

      There surely are other trackers as well that I’m not aware of or there’s Romanian content on other international ones, but the community there was quite impressive - you always knew you could source some good quality stuff.

      For me, personally, FL was pretty much my go-to whenever I wanted to get something that I couldn’t source for free.

  • ginerel@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    It’s already down, omg. I hope it’s just temporary :(

    Edit: seems like there’s just too much activity on it. I briefly reached the login page, but after entering my credentials, I got the same error. Guess we’re safe for now.

    • SmokeFree@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      I think some people giving free invites now like I did. I gave my last 3 invites to people that have no experience in private trackers so they can at least enjoy it before shutting down.

      • Duck@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        1 year ago

        Sad that you don’t have any left. I just wanted in to compare it with other private trackers I’m in.

        • spiderman@ani.social
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          1 year ago

          in simple terms, a private torrent site (that is closed to public). only users with an account can log in and use the torrents in the website.

          each torrent that the users use has a unique passkey (consider it as an id) so that the site will know what torrents you have downloaded and how much you have seeded it back. they use these stats to monitor users, checking whether they seed for a certain amount of time and whether the users have the required ratio. why do they do this? to make sure that all torrents in their site is available to everyone (meaning there will be no torrents that has 0 seeders, rendering the torrent not being able to use anymore since no one seeds it).

          there are guides out there, check out !trackers@lemmy.dbzer0.com , maybe they might have a guide.

  • spiritedpause@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    This is why it’s more and more important to have tools like BitMagnet that allow you self host it, and crawl/index the DHT to essentially have your own torrent search database that doesn’t rely on 3rd party trackers.

    https://bitmagnet.io

  • midniter@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    It’s not shutting down anymore, a previous administrator returned from the ashes and he will lead us through the night again.