one year on
LLaMA weights circulate online as torrent magnet PR lands in official repository
A pull request to add a BitTorrent link to Meta’s LLaMA repo lands as the model circulates online, reviving debate over access and control.
Meta’s LLaMA language model has begun circulating openly on the internet this week. Separately, a contributor has submitted a pull request adding a BitTorrent magnet link to the official GitHub repository. The PR, titled “Save bandwidth by using a torrent to distribute more efficiently,” adds a BitTorrent magnet link to the repository README. The README still points to a Google Form for download.
LLaMA was announced by Meta last month and was initially available to researchers who filled out a Google Form. On Hacker News, the thread has reached 909 points and 693 comments. One commenter says the leak originated from 4chan and notes the torrent contains a unique download URL, allowing Meta to identify the leaker.
The record
Users on Hacker News thread (909 points, 693 comments) discuss the leak’s 4chan origin and the unique download URL attached to the torrent.
One year later — open only if you can handle spoilers
The LLaMA leak triggered a wave of community-driven fine-tuning and deployment, including instruction-tuned variants like Alpaca within weeks. It also forced Meta to adopt a more open stance with later models. The incident became a watershed moment in the open-weights movement, though copyright and misuse concerns would only grow.
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