> Why doesn't HF support BitTorrent?

Harder to track downloads then. Only when clients hit the tracker would they be able to get download states, and forget about private repositories or the "gated" ones that Meta/Facebook does for their "open" models.

Still, if vanity metrics wasn't so important, it'd be a great option. I've even thought of creating my own torrent mirror of HF to provide as a public service, as eventually access to models will be restricted, and it would be nice to be prepared for that moment a bit better.

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homarp 4 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

how are all the private trackers tracking ratios?

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taminka 12 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

most of the traffic is probably from open weights, just seed those, host private ones as is

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sowbug 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I thought of the tracking and gate questions, too, when I vibed up an HF torrent service a few nights ago. (Super annoying BTW to have to download the files just to hash the parts, especially when webseeds exist.) Model owners could disable or gate torrents the same way they gate the models, and HF could still measure traffic by .torrent downloads and magnet clicks.

It's a bit like any legalization question -- the black market exists anyway, so a regulatory framework could bring at least some of it into the sunlight.

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embedding-shape 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> Model owners could disable or gate torrents the same way they gate the models, and HF could still measure traffic by .torrent downloads and magnet clicks.

But that'll only stop a small part, anyone could share the infohash and if you're using the dht/magnet without .torrent files or clicks on a website, no one can count those downloads unless they too scrape the dht for peers who are reporting they've completed the download.

	▲	sowbug 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Right, but that's already happening today. That's the black-market point.