torrent

My understanding is very basic, but from what I understand (please anyone feel free to correct me if you know more), it uses newsgroups, which is, historically speaking, an extremely old computer network communication system (conceived in '79) that was used for sharing news and files (it used to have forums and stuff on it too), and it works by transferring files in parts, then unpacking/assembling them at their end point.

Because they are in pieces during transfer, it's very difficult for ISPs to know what you are downloading, therefore no VPN is necessary.

There is also no seeding because it's a server-client model, not P2P.

Imagine a federated Reddit with extremely lax (or no) moderation, and files. Access to a Usenet server gives you access to an almost unlimited number of communities discussing almost any topic you can think of, some topics you've never heard of, some topics you don't want to be involved with, and (depending on which server you subscribe to) downloadable files.

I haven't used one in years, so I have no idea how accurate the previous paragraph still is.

If it's better to DM please do, but what service do you use? At the moment I've been using arr with torrents for.. ISO.. And would like to take the step to usenet

Nzbgeek and nzbplanet are good. From my experience these 2 have very similar quality.

Drunkenslug is a lot harder to get into but it does find items the other two don't have on occasion. On the downside, drunkenslug lacks a one time subscription and the other two have a one time subscription. It does however have a free tier so you can probably be fine still using it as a last resort to try finding harder to get content.

This is a good starting point if you want to dive in.

I use nzbfinder.ws and NzbGeek.info. I'm quite happy with that combo.

I'll have to talk to my brother because he's the one that set it up, but i think we use dognzb and it seems to work quite well.

I'm working towards a better understanding of it so if that doesn't answer your question please let me know and I'll get you a proper answer :)