Founded in 2012, MagnetDL has amassed a substantial user base by offering a clear and easy-to-use torrent search portal.
As its name suggests, the site relies on magnet links instead of regular torrent files, and the site is particularly popular in the United States.
Over the past few days, however, regular users have trouble reaching the site. Instead of the usual search box, they now see a Cloudflare error message, suggesting that MagnetDL’s server is unreachable.
No Response
To find out more about the prolonged downtime, TorrentFreak reached out to the site’s operator. But, several days have passed now and we have yet to hear back. It’s possible that the site merely has hosting-related issues. However, nothing can be ruled out at this point.
The last time MagnetDL went down for several days dates back more than five years. At the time, the site decided to throw the towel, without prior warning.
Copyright-Related Hosting Problems
At the time, the operator ran into copyright troubles with its hosting provider, and pulling the plug initially made sense. However, after seeing many disappointed comments from users, the site returned after little more than a week.
It’s certainly possible that the current downtime is again caused by copyright complaints. However, without confirmation, we can only speculate.
In recent years, MagnetDL mostly stayed under the radar. The site briefly surprised some people when it appeared to give unsolicited vaccination advice during the height of the Covid epidemic, but that eventually passed.
The site is currently blocked following court orders in a few countries, including the UK and Australia. Nonetheless, MagnetDL managed to get more than 10 million monthly visits, making it one of the more popular torrent search engines.
If more information comes in on MagnetDL’s downtime, we will update this article accordingly.
Update: MagnetDL is operational on the Tor network though its .onion domain. New uploads appear there as well.
Update 2: And now the .onion domain is down too.
