The primary reason a private track is private is to make it feasible to maintain a curated community. Many users are not good torrent citizens. Many users are not good netizens in the first place. More than a few will look to actively do harm. Keeping a mostly closed community allows the vetting of users and those who end up breaking the rules are dealt with swiftly.

The extra barrier of entry also helps prevent bad actors from operating on the site. This is of course not a full proof thing but it is obviously much better than a public site.

Additionally running a private tracker and site takes server resources that are not free. Limiting the total number of users is a way of maintaining uptime by staying within your operational limits.

I’m sure there are other benefits for private trackers but these are at least a few.

I am not going to explain why someone on the internet was mean to you. Given the tone of this post I wouldn’t be surprised if it was deserved.

Are you asking about why private trackers are private or are you asking about why a handful of people were mean to you who also happened to use a private tracker?

Edit: typo

Symlinks likely wouldn’t work for a torrent, because that’s more like a shortcut; The symlink doesn’t actually point to the file, it just points to another filepath.

They are kinda like a shortcut but they are resolved directly by the filesystem and in the fast majority of cases should work perfectly fine if done correctly. In OPs case I’d probably leave the original file intact and create the link at the new desired destination.

You can’t have a hardlink for your C: drive on your D: drive

Thats why I didn’t recommend hardlinks. But I misread OPs post and I see the data will all live on the same drive so I revise my original suggestion and also recommend hardlinks.

But a torrent client likely won’t be able to handle the “oh actually you need to go visit location B” instructions, and will just crash/freeze/refuse to seed.

You’re just pulling that out of your ass.

*all of this is largely under the context of linux but should translate to windows

Symlinks? Pretty sure that exists on windows.

So, why use Linux

Because I prefer it in functionally every way to Windows. I prefer (when feasible) to use open source and/or FLOSS software. I am vastly more familiar with Linux than I am Windows on a technical level. I generally dislike most things about Windows.

and use Steam

It works, it’s convenient, they have a generally good track record of not screwing over users.

I prefer many of the features of Linux distros, but using a client like Steam defeats the purpose of them.

That is a pretty serious leap in logic. You’re welcome to not like Steam on a technical, moral, and/or philosophical level but at the end of the day it is a single application and saying that using Linux while also using Steam “defeats the purpose of Linux” is ridiculous. Linux is an Operating System, it is meant to assist the user in computing. If the user is using Linux to compute they are fulfilling the exact purpose of Linux, that being an open and free operating system to be used by any who desire it.