Some of them have freeleech on some torrents. TorrentLeech has freeleech on every torrent over a certain size (I think 15 GB) + Box Sets of any size and then you just have to seed for 10 days total, then you can stop without penalty to your ratio. I have never paid money to TorrentLeech for access. I suppose this would change quickly if I was downloading individual episodes of a new show or 10 to 14.99 GB torrents, but that’s not my usual usage pattern.
I will say that some of your criticism is correct. I will often avoid using the private tracker to avoid having to seed for 10 days. I can’t get to a 1.0 ratio on private trackers, but I can on public ones, but freeleech seeding adds to my ratio with no penalty for downloading. The zero-sum vibe is both real and off-putting.
I currently have a ratio surplus of 34 GB, and it started me with 25 GB. The benefit is if I really want something, it’s easy to access
It is in fact an algorithm because it’s choosing what posts to put in front of you based on multiple criteria (time since it was posted, votes/number of comments/time since last comment). They are relatively transparent and well documented criteria, though.
However, it’s not a personalized feed based on your interests and unsolicited data collection, which is what people sometimes mean when they say “the algorithm.”
Yeah, it makes very little sense to “play the long game” on a private site to spread malware to a small user base when you could just go to any public tracker where it’s the Wild West. Could someone do it? Sure, but it’s really not realistic to expect that regularly.