I don’t live in the US, so my ISP doesn’t really seem to care what I torrent, but the megathread vehemently recommends to always use one. Since VPNs aren’t cheap and I’m on a strict budget (wouldn’t pirate otherwise), is it really that dangerous to torrent without one?
Private trackers tend to have better quality control and selection. They also have stricter rules about ratio, seeding, and behavior. An invite is required. Sometimes you can go through an interview process to get an invite. Usually once you get started in a decent private tracker you can get into others through recruitment. I won’t name names, but it’s not hard to find info.