I'm just gonna apologize already for some long run-on sentences and stuff, the text below the questions are more just unorganized thought piles then actual organized specific confusions.
Q1: Are private trackers worth it?
I've been seeing a lot recently about how private trackers are like the holy grail for piracy, better rips, faster releases, no ISP notices (I use a vpn so this doesn't matter), etc, but I have never had issues like that. Every time I want to torrent a movie (including new ones) I can get them from places like 1337x, (rip) RARGB, or even tpb with good enough quality for what I need (3-7gb usually). I don't have issues with finding new releases or higher quality ones and all the torrents I need I can find on public places. So what actually would be the appeal of private trackers for someone like me, like what do private trackers actually have that public ones don't? Also, it wouldn't help that my internet connect is absolutely horrible for torrenting, 500-600+ down and like 15 up with a vpn on and it isn't better without one on much, just faster downloads. And so this would just make meeting the "share ratios" or whatever the trackers call it really hard to achieve because for me it can take days or longer to sometimes reach a 1.0 share ratio outside of some specific cases. It doesn't help either that people seem to often be purged or kicked from private trackers if they don't meet certain standards or aren't active enough and then they'll have to go through the whole rigorous interview process again or have to start from scratch with working their way up from trackers like RED.
Q2: What makes a torrenting site safe / unsafe?
I saw some stuff recently about how 1337x isn't safe anymore because of some malicious game torrent being posted from some person connected to the owner of the site. I personally do not pirate games often (I've only done it once and I mainly just pirate movies and shows) and so I do not really know what makes a torrent site safe/unsafe for people to torrent from as I thought regardless of site, unless its from one specific trusted group like fitgirl, that there was always a risk of downloading malware and so you had to be really careful of what torrents they download and make sure that what they downloaded wasn't malware either by checking things like seed counts or reviews or whatever (never had to do this so idk what the signs are). Do some sites just not have malware on them or what does it mean for a torrent site to be safe / unsafe.
I'll edit this post or comment if I have anymore questions but thank you for taking the time to actually read this.
Genuinely massive thank you for making this and being very complete with the info you provide in this. This is the most helpful response I've gotten so far as a lot of the people in these comments seem to think that private trackers are necessary for everyone if they want even decent quality rips. I now think that after reading your comment that I won't bother spending the insane amount of time (and bandwidth) it takes to get to the higher up PT's. I can find just about everything I need on public trackers with good enough quality for me as my highest quality screen is 1080 (I even used YIFY torrents for the longest time before realizing how bad a lot of them are). Thank you for explaining all this, and I'll continue seeding to however much I can without a seedbox cause believe it or not, I pirate (in game, in minecraft, as a joke, for educational purposes only, dont try this at home, simulated, not real) cause I can't spend money on this stuff.