Text:
I consent to Plex to: (i) sell certain personal information (hashed emails, advertising identifiers) to third-parties for advertising and marketing purposes; and (ii) store and/or access certain personal information (advertising identifiers, IP address, content being watched) on my device(s) and share that information with Plex’s advertising partners. This data is used to deliver personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. Your consent applies to all devices on which you have Plex installed. You can withdraw your consent at any time in Account Settings or using this page.
Soure: https://www.plex.tv/vendors/ (Might have to clear cache)
Can also read about the changes here: https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/
I don't know why everyone in the selfhosting community still even mentions Plex or uses it.
It's closed source, not free; Jellyfin is a no brainer yet people still go to Plex??
The sunken cost of buying a plexpass on sale for 39 dollars 15 years ago.
I bought a Plex pass for 90 or something. I officially dropped Plex about 4 months ago now. For 90 bucks I got something like 8 years out of it. I'll call that a win, I don't feel like I wasted my money, I don't feel like I overpayed. Just moving on now.
My TV doesn't have a Jellyfin app, only a Plex app. I'm not buying a new TV just to use my preferred media server, sadly :-(
"still even mentions plex"
I've been using plex for a LONG time, and bought a lifetime plexpass 12 years ago. I'm pretty sure I haven't started a thread on Lemmy regarding Plex, but I'm sure I'm not alone as a LONG TIME user. Plex just works for me and cost me $75 in 2013. Right now I've got no pressing reason to switch.
If they remove my plexpass features, or start showing me ads / making my user experience worse, then I'll probably look to change, and won't participate in these awful 'plex' posts.
P.S. we should encourage as much new content on Lemmy as possible if you ask me.
Same with me, 12 years, about $70, and it still works just as well as ever. I turn off any new features I don't want, my friends and family can still stream from me for free since I have plex pass already, and it's easy to share without having to pass around my IP address.
Same. I bought the lifetime pass on sale many years ago, my setup is still working fine without me having to have touched it for at least the past 3 years outside of applying an update from time to time. I don't stream their free shows or movies and have those setup so that they don't even show up as an option on my tv.
Do I wish it was still the same company it was a decade ago? Of course... but so far they haven't impacted my experience to the point that I feel the need to replace it with something else. The second that happens I will be spinning up Jellyfin.
Plex was the reason why I learned Docker + watchtower, so that I wouldn't have to worry about updates (work smarter not harder). Now I have like 35 containers and am comfortable with docker. 🐳
I host a Plex server for close to 70 friends and family members, from multiple parts of the world. I have over 60TBs of movies, tv shows, anime, anime movies, and flac music, and everyone can connect directly to my server via my reverse proxy and my public IPs. This works on their phones, their tvs, their tablets and PCs. I have people of all ages using my server, from very young kids to very old grandparents of friends. I have friends who share their accounts with their families, meaning I probably have already hit 100+ people using my server. Everyone is able to request whatever they want through overseerr with their Plex account, and everything shows up pretty instantly as soon as it is found and downloaded. It works almost flawlessly, whether locally or remotely, from anywhere in the world. I myself don't even reside in the same home that my Plex server resides. I paid for my lifetime pass over 10 years ago.
Can you guarantee that I can move over to jellyfin and that every single person currently using my Plex server will continue having the same level of experience and quality of life that they're having with my Plex server currently? Because if you can't, you just answered your own question. Sometimes we self host things for ourselves and we can deal with some pains, but sometimes we require something that works for more people than just us, and that's when we have to make compromises. Plex is not perfect, and is actively becoming enshittified, but I can't simply dump it and replace it with something very much meant for local or single person use rather than actively serving tens to hundreds of people off a server built with OTC components.
I would switch in a heartbeat if Jellyfin didn't... kinda suck, honestly.
But the difference in usability is enough that it's just not an option.
For the record, I updated Plex today and I haven't seen a notification like this anywhere, although that text snippet does match their privacy policy ad data opt-in settings blurb that has been in place for a while. I may need a bit more context here.
Jellyfin is hardly a no-brainer. I set it up out of curiosity a few weeks ago and my first question was how do I give access to my friends and family. So I searched, and all of the results were talking about setting up a VPN or a reverse proxy or whatever. Man, I just want to tell my mom "install this app on your tv and log in", which is exactly what Plex does.
I get that Plex is enshittifying, but pretending Jellyfin is a drop-in replacement is delusional.
Jellyfin is a no-brainer. Publishing services on the Internet is complex.
If they adhered to somewhat modern security principles for their Backend I wouldn't mind hosting it behind a reverse proxy. But since large parts of the API is unauthorized and unprotected, I wont.
And I do not plan on supporting family and friends in setting up vpns on all of their devices
What are the worries behind it? Last time someone was worried about the security it was about knowing filenames of the stuff you host by brute forcing iirc
The issue is their approach to security. I don't trust them to properly secure their software, since they have proven to prefer client compatibility over security.
Understandable. I don't worry that much myself since I haven't heard anything bad happening yet. And with ro rights to media, potential damage at least should be pretty limited.
You’re in a post about people outraged about an opt-in anonymous data sharing option on Plex, and you’re not worried about known security issues because you haven’t heard of anything bad happening yet?
Make it make sense.
Seconded it’s not a no-brainer. I spent days trying to get it set up with Docker on two different computers and three different distros. It wouldn’t install, if it did install it had errors, if it would even open at all with anything other than a black screen. Hours trying to search how to fix it. I gave up and installed it as a standalone app on a common distro. Not as convenient, but FML it finally worked. Really felt like I wasted my time. Personally, this is the exact bullshit linux fanatics completely ignore when they insist on how great linux is vs whatever. I’ve got a shitload of patience, willpower and modest skill to try to get something like this working, but 99% of the population doesn’t. That’s why linux will stay on the back burner. And if it ever becomes just as easy as Windows…guess what? You’ll have many of the same problem as Windows.
You struggled to set up Jellyfin with docker?
Damn
Don’t be smug.
I mean, if I didn't know better, I'd start to suspect that the large multimedia corporations building walled gardens of apps in closed Smart TV ecosystems don't really want you to be able to easily tell your mom how to watch shit for free. I mean they'll let you, if you really insist on having that app available, but someone will have to pay THEM money instead first (and probably let them spy on you). That's their racket.
The reason Plex can do it is because they do make money, doing shitty stuff like this to their users, so they can use that money to open these doors into SmartTV-land. The root of the problem is that your SmartTV itself (and your mom's) is a locked down proprietary piece of shit, designed exclusively for shoving all proprietary content these media companies develop down your throat, and there are few convenient workarounds that are available to us, because of course they make workarounds as inconvenient as possible.
Unless you're willing to ditch everything proprietary and insist on open technology for everything, which is hard on its own, you're going to end up with a janky mix of proprietary and open systems that always require some compromises, because the proprietary stuff forces us to compromise. It's literally a "this is why we can't have nice things" situation.
Or... You know... Jellyfin could make it so I don't have to setup elaborate VPN schemes and have every user install that on every one of their devices. For example they could fix their security issues to make it safer to expose JF through a reverse proxy, bug they refuse to not break client compatibility
This is why I use Yunohost. It makes all of that just a "click buttons" affair. Then you can tell your Mom the same thing. Only the domain is yours so Jellyfin can't hold it over your head.
For me it's PlexAmp and the few tech-illiterate friends I have who use my server for video streaming. 99% of the time, I just watch movies on my desktop with VLC player but I've yet to find a self-hosting music player half as good as PlexAmp
Yeah, the sad reality is that Plex’s setup experience is much smoother. And when you’re trying to convert people, the single largest obstacle is often social inertia. So lowering the barriers to entry is extremely important. My mother-in-law would need to sideload the Jellyfin app onto her TV, but Plex is available right on its app store.
Luckily, you can run both side by side. Jellyfin for me and my more tech-literate friends, Plex for those who don’t know/don’t care to learn.
I have read many people say this, but I don't understand what they mean by it. When I set up Jellyfin, it was a very simple process.
Simplicity is relative to each person's abilities and the tool in question.
Apparently all your friends and family are comfortable with hostnames and ip addresses. Not everyone's are. Also, not everyone wants to buy a static ip or setup a dynamic dns service or similar. Plex is definitely simpler. I have used both.
I mean pretty much everyone I know uses web browsers and sometimes type in web addresses lol
You seem a little out of touch with how people think.
I doubt they're thinking at all if writing a web address is too much lol
"Facebook dot what? Stop the tech speak, nerd!"
Then, you are completely out of touch with how most people use computers.
I'm not sure if you're just surrounded by mentally deficient people for some reason or seriously underestimating them, but pretty much everyone I know can type in a website address lol
Or maybe it's some zoomie "what's a computer" thing
They can if forced to, but they never have to do that normally. What you're telling people to do is make normal people do things they don't normally do when browsing the web and saying its as easy as making them sign up for a Plex account. Most people have done similar things as the latter, but they only have to type a full URL once or twice in their lifetime.
That is way beyond the comfort zone of most people I know. The general use case of web browser for normal people is googling the website they want and clicking the link while being blissfully unaware of what a URL is or does.
This does not mean they are mentally deficient, it just means they spend their mental processing and memory on other things they deem actually important.
How is someone who can't manage to copy and paste "www.my-jellyfin-server.com" into the address bar going to figure out where to get a Plex account?
Until jellyfin adds better user log in plex will still thrive. I do the self hosting I don't want a call every few days about they can't log in. The one click Gmail login with plex is amazing.
I don't share videos with people using google to log into any site.
The whole anti Google holier than thou is annoying at these levels.
Ok fine, don't use Google. But telling your friends and loved ones to switch email providers over your crusade is worse than vegans telling you about their diet.
I'm all for kicking Google to the curb. I'm not for shoving my beliefs down other people's throats.
It's not "shoving my beliefs down other people's throats" telling them that these are the options for signing in the service I'm hosting
Do you have a moment to talk about our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?
No ma'am, this is a Wendys drive thru.
But really, I think you misunderstood the intended inference from OP, it has nothing to do with email and everything to do with data collection, algorithms, and not quite fair use media access that get's logged to Google (a third party) ad infinitum.