I’ve been using public trackers for the past 20 years, and never had a problem with them. I never got any virus or malware, and almost always found what I was looking for. What I couldn’t find through public trackers, I’d find it with soulseek. So I’m wondering what are the actual advantages of using private trackers?
Aside from what has been posted already, the vast majority of good P2P groups only release on private trackers, some with notices to not repost publicly. There is a massive collection of quality content that is either not available on publics or completely dead and forgotten.