I think half of them prefer streaming sites and half of them are just lawful, for some unfathomable reason.
But seriously, torrents have declined in recent years for a number of reasons. One of them is Netflix and assorted legal channels, which reduced piracy in general. A lot of people ended up pirating content only because they couldn’t find a legal and convenient – and reasonably affordable – way to access it. (On the other hand, the fragmentation of (legal) online video had the opposite effect. If people need to subscribe to a whole bunch of services to keep up to date with their interests, they’ll go back to piracy. And as it happens, they did.)
The most obvious reason is the rise of streaming portals. These became very popular, because they’re less of a hassle compared to torrents, and maybe because it’s like watching TV, so psychologically it doesn’t register as piracy. For populations used to cable television (which varies a lot from country to country), accessing streaming sites via Kodi-based hardware is even easier once someone sets it up. It’s not just for younger people who never learnt how to torrent because they didn’t need to, it’s also for older people who couldn’t learn how to torrent.
Another reason is faster internet speeds, which made direct HTTP downloads for larger files practical – and the BitTorrent protocol a bit redundant in that sense.
And another is ISP blocking of torrent sites, which currently doesn’t affect (most of) Eastern Europe or North America, but it’s a thing elsewhere. Even if it can be easily bypassed, it adds another layer of complexity and that’s enough to reduce traffic.
ISP blocking globally and in the EU
For comparison, here’s an estimate of how many people watched the Game of Thrones season premiere in the first 24 hours since it aired (though I should stress it’s just an estimate, measuring methods are debatable or unknown):
17.4 million legally from HBO
54 million from elsewhere, of which:
76.6% from streaming sites
10.8% from public torrent sites
0.5% from private torrent sites
Torrents aren’t dead though. One, they are still enormously popular in some regions, including the very populous East Asia. And two, streaming sites often acquire the files they stream from torrents, it’s a symbiotic (maybe even parasitic…) relation. Last year, global download traffic was dominated by YouTube, Netflix, and streaming services, but upload traffic was dominated by (dun dun DUN!!!) BitTorrent. It’s not what you take, it’s what you give. ;)
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