You’re downloading old and/or unpopular stuff. For you to upload content someone has to be actively downloading that content (that’s how the bit torrent protocol works at the most basic level). If you choose some 5 year-old FL of a Game of Thrones pack with 7,000 seeders, that’s on you
I’m on a few private trackers, never paid a penny towards any of them, and have high ratios in all of them
It did take me a little work and spent some time seeding stuff I didn’t really want but I got there with a shitty home connection (my connection is pretty good now but I built those ratios with dog shit speeds)