Depends mostly on what content you want to load. Public trackers are fine for popular stuff like Netflix shows or Hollywood movies in English, but you run into trouble as soon as you want more nieche things like audiobooks or movies in your native language. For that you need specialized private trackers or usenet indexers, idk which is better though. One requires invites and seeding, the other usually cost a few bugs extra, so it kinda depends what you prefer.
DDL without a debrid service is pretty bad imo, you'll constantly find things on hosters you don't have a premium accounts with. Even with a debrid service it's hit or miss, especially since links on some hosters get DMCAed very quickly. It's ok for one-off downloads every now and then, but the fact that there isn't even an option to automate the process is pretty telling.
He's talking about Usenet.
You need a provider (giving you access to it), some indexers (communities that catalog and link to releases) and a download client, and you're good to go. What you actually don't need is a VPN, because you're only loading from the provider and not seeding anything.