Plex now want to SELL your personal data
-
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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]I just want to tell my mom “install this app on your tv and log in”
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.
-
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/Can someone explain to me why you need anything more than directories filled with files to view content?
I'm struggling to understand why anybody would need or want something like Plex.
I want to watch a movie. I open explorer, go to the folder movies, select the movie, and double click the icon.
The end.
-
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.
That's just the nature of service migration; of course for people like you who are very dependent on it, it's not a no-brainer, but for anyone who wants to start hosting one of the two, yes it will be.
In your case yes Plex is more appropriate but at the same time the clock is ticking for Plex if they continue on this route...
-
You sound like me. I hope you can find a way to flip your focus: your time outside work should be way more about you than it sounds like your work life is letting it be.
Maybe you are one of the very few with a meaningful job. If not, consider trying to treat your job like the bullshit it is and use your best cycles outside work on stuff that will really make you happy.
Thanks dude.
I am incredibly fortunate that my boss is a Saint and we literally put ourselves first and the work second. It’s a small company and we are not expected to think about work outside of work and they’ve shown time and time again with their actions that they are good people.
I just don’t have that kind of drive for coding now outside of work as work satiates that desire, which means out of work I can focus on mental health which for me comes from being outside or doing something.
I will say the past isn’t amazing as I’m quite new but has two raises and a reduction in hours in less than 2 years.
-
If we find out "I do not consent" opts out, I'm fine with it. If we find out "I do not consent" leads to a "Close our account" page, it's time for pitchforks, especially since they recently had a huge sale on lifetime memberships.
If we find out "I do not consent" opts out, I'm fine with it.
Why? They don't need more money. Jellyfin proves how much of their service can be done for free
-
I don’t know that Google gets to log your access in that scenario, Plex is just using their login system
Huh? Google would, at a minimum, know what service is requesting authentication, and plex would know which google user account is being used to authenticate. Maybe they hash that information, but why would anyone trust that? Even if you're not breaking any laws with what you're hosting on your plex account, I totally understand why someone might not like the idea of google or plex having data about the identities of users accessing your server and what services are being run from it.
Yeah, you kinda got to the breakdown in this conversation. Google sure knows that you're using Plex.
That is not a concern, though. Plex is a perfectly legal piece of software.
I think people are taking me saying "Google doesn't know what you're streaming with Plex, but Plex does, so that'd be a bigger issue" as irrelevant because they assume Plex is itself a liability, which it isn't.
It's weird how corporate copyright assumptions have seeped to the mainstream and people assume that anything you do with your owned media is illegal unless you're paying somebody.
-
Me eating
and reading the comments of Plex users arguing with Jellyfin users, while myself being a user of Kodi which has it's own problems..there are dozens of us!
-
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
You can cast jellyfin to any receiver. I use a Chromecast.
Hearing people think they need an app just to use their TV as a TV is painful.
-
For me it’s chromecast support. Maybe Jellyfin has that now but it didn’t last time I checked.
When did you check? I've been using it that way for over a year.
-
Can someone explain to me why you need anything more than directories filled with files to view content?
I'm struggling to understand why anybody would need or want something like Plex.
I want to watch a movie. I open explorer, go to the folder movies, select the movie, and double click the icon.
The end.
How do I do that with my TV?
-
Also, “it works on my machine” doesn’t mean it’s not a bug or a legitimate performance issue inherent to the software
Of course not, but when there's an issue that's limited to certain users, the immediate question is "what is different about this installation that's causing this issue here and not elsewhere?". It would have been just as easy for you to start with Jellyfin instead of plex, but then you would have likely run into the same issue when trying to add plex to the same shared media volume. That isn't an uncommon issue, but when you've already said 'it's not worth my time to troubleshoot this application', I can only assume you also didn't have the time to read the documentation. That's fine - most of us here understand that homelabs are a niche hobby interest and not everyone is willing to maintain a server that requires technical knowledge and time to keep running smoothly. Some people just want something that works out of the box and don't care about it being open sourced or customizable, and that's fair. If that's why you prefer plex that's fine. But it isn't the developer's fault if you choose to go down a more complicated deployment path and find that you're out of your depth.
It’s always crazy to me how holier-than-thou, not-the-developer’s-job people can get without heeding even the most basic, ground-level software development principles.
Containerized applications are simply not designed to work like native applications - they are very much built with the assumption that those people who are deploying them have - at a minimum - a cursory knowledge of VM's and shared volume ACL's and a willingness to troubleshoot their configuration if there are conflicts. It isn't because they're shirking responsibility as developers, it's because they're providing source code that's designed for remote service developers to plug into other services/environments and customized. If you can't be bothered to do basic troubleshooting that's very common with shared volume deployments, then maybe you've reached your personal threshold for how much self-hosting you're willing to do. Again, that's not 'holier-than-thou', that's just an acknowledgment of what remote application deployment requires.
Plex and jellyfin can be run together if you really wanted to do it, but if you can't be bothered to do basic troubleshooting then I won't be bothered to soothe your ego.
I just don’t think you need to make your whole personality about your pet home server or that it needs to be finicky and annoying to work
Lmao, idk what to tell you bud. Some people actually enjoy working on their cars, but I don't hear you getting mad at them because all you're willing to do yourself is change your oil.
You are actually wrong about that first assumption, I did try both at the same time and the problems with Jellyfin moved me over to Plex. Plex never had an issue handling my remote library at any point, and in fact ran just as well in a container in the NAS holding the files as it did natively on both Windows and Linux, so it was surprisingly easy to see what combination of placing files and software worked better for me.
Which I guess is a good segue to your second point, because hey, turns out there are plenty of applications that are pretty agnostic about running inside of a container or not, Plex included. And there are several implementations of easy self-hosted apps that will set up a container for you. Unfortunately most of those are commercial software trying to monetize self-hosting, and snobbish hobbyists seem to have no particular urgency for beating corporations to that particular punch.
And yes, you can run Plex and Jellyfin together. I don't know what that point is supposed to add to this. You can mostly run any software alongisde any other software. Frankly, the biggest issue of doing that, besides how redundant it is, is that Jellyfin will insist on writing a whole bunch of garbage all over your library if you want to set it up its way. Plex will mostly tolerate this and keep chugging along, though, so it's not a dealbreaker if you don't mind.
And absolutely you can make a hobby out of self-hosting or whatever else, but the point is car nuts typically don't hold the opinion that nobody should be having cars but them. I mean, there's plenty of car snobbery, and a bunch of people will say they prefer a manual transmission car over an automatic, but it's a pretty extreme position to hear someone say if you can't drive stick you shouldn't have access to cars. Let alone say that if you didn't build your car yourself you aren't skilled enough to have one, which is the actual equivalence here.
-
I think we can make an exception for soup and ice-cream, no?
Haha totally, I should have said processed food, it's the most marketed.
We could also say ultra processed news now that I think about it: statistical data -> random blog article misinterprets the charts -> tweet w people not reading the sources -> screenshot goes around on facebook -> LLM regurgitates it -> TV news anchor says it with a straight face
-
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
This is why you shouldn’t use the built-in TV OS. Use an Apple TV, Nvidia Shield, fire stick if you’re fine with ads, a tiny NUC would work, maybe a raspberry Pi although idk about that one.
-
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.
Can I guarantee? There are no guarantees in self hosting. By this logic you can never move away from Plex. There's always unknowns. There's always new issues to trip over. Plex is hardly without it's own warts, but because they're 'known' to you and your users nothing else will ever be able to measure up.
It's a logical fallacy and a trap.
I set up Jellyfin basically overnight when the Plex pass changes occurred. Reverse proxies are trivial, as are docker containers, don't let the anecdotes about things being hard or VPN being needed intimidate you.
There were absolutely bumps in the road. I had to make users for each person and email them customized sign-up links. Yes, that kinda sucked, but that's the price for running and controlling the authentication yourself instead of though a 3rd party service that can and absolutely will eventually use that data to snoop.
Most of the time, once sent the link the users were fine, 9/10 of my users had no further issues and quickly adapted. For the last 1/10, I had to trouble shoot a few things and eventually ended up recommending a different device to connect with (it was an old TV with a really old version of Plex for TVs, they ended up buying a $40 Google TV device from Walmart and got set up that way).
The whole time I was running both Plex and Jellyfin so the migration process could happen at my speed.
My point is this: no, it wasn't painless to switch. Yes, some tech support was required. Yes, the user who was getting hundreds of dollars (annually) of streaming services effectively for free had to shell out a paltry sum to upgrade and actually enjoys their experience much more now. No, that didn't make it impossible or not worth doing.
I'm not saying what's best for you and your users, and I'm absolutely not guaranteeing you'll have no issues beyond these, but I hope you understand your hands aren't actually tied, you're just boxing yourself in.
-
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.
There is one thing I want from jellyfin. It is to be able to login from their Android app to watch or set something to record without jumping through a bunch of hoops.
-
Yeah, you kinda got to the breakdown in this conversation. Google sure knows that you're using Plex.
That is not a concern, though. Plex is a perfectly legal piece of software.
I think people are taking me saying "Google doesn't know what you're streaming with Plex, but Plex does, so that'd be a bigger issue" as irrelevant because they assume Plex is itself a liability, which it isn't.
It's weird how corporate copyright assumptions have seeped to the mainstream and people assume that anything you do with your owned media is illegal unless you're paying somebody.
That is not a concern, though. Plex is a perfectly legal piece of software.
There are a bunch of reasons why it might be a concern, and only the least of them has to do with the legality of copyright use.
they assume Plex is itself a liability, which it isn’t.
Except plex has already proven themselves willing to ban users based on their use and streaming practices, so it clearly is a liability
It’s weird how corporate copyright assumptions have seeped to the mainstream and people assume that anything you do with your owned media is illegal unless you’re paying somebody.
If you live inside the US (or a state with trade agreements with the US) and are ripping physical media to store on your server and stream digitally, you are absolutely breaking the law. Doubly so if you are sharing that media with others outside your household.
'It's not a problem because I have nothing to hide' <- you are here.
-
I understand this but we have to realize that what makes Plex simpler is the fact that they are a network intermediary that does what it wants with your home networks; it's like insisting that NordVPN is better than Mullvad
IMHO the only solution will be improving wireguard guis and stuff, Jellyfin is not lacking.
I wonder if having a “sign in” page within jellyfin that just fronts a wireguard configuration panel, saves the creds, and automatically connects and routes app traffic over the vpn iface is a remotely viable idea.
-
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/wrote last edited by [email protected]The more services you have depending on a 3rd party which can do whatever the fuck they want, either directly or by changing the rules when the feel like it (i.e. not bound by rules they cannot change, such as root DNS providers are) and then doing it, the less your system is actually self-hosted, IMHO.
For me the whole point of self-hosting is exactly being as independent as possible of 3rd parties that can just fuck you up, be it on purpose (generally for $$$) or because they go bankrupt and close their services.
This is why I've actually chosen to run Kodi on my home server that doubles down as TV Box even though I can't easilly use it from anywhere else (it's possible but it involves using a standalone database that is then shared, which can only be safelly done through customly setup ssh pipes) rather than something like Plex.
It's kinda funny to see people into self-hosting still doing the kind of mistake I did almost 3 decades ago (fortunatelly in a professional environment) of trusting a 3rd party to the point of becoming dependent on them and later getting burned when they abused that trust, and which led me to avoid such situations like the plague ever since.
Mind you, I can understand if people for whom self-hosting is not driven by a desire to reduce vulnerability to the whims of 3rd parties (which includes reducing the risk of enshittification) and is instead driven by "waste not" (for example, bringing new life to old hardware rather than throwing it out) or by it being a fun challenge, don't really care to be as independent as possible from such 3rd parties.
-
Every day of my life trying to explain to friends they need to quit using spoon fed software. Sigh.
spoon fed software
That's a new one. I like it.
-
That is not a concern, though. Plex is a perfectly legal piece of software.
There are a bunch of reasons why it might be a concern, and only the least of them has to do with the legality of copyright use.
they assume Plex is itself a liability, which it isn’t.
Except plex has already proven themselves willing to ban users based on their use and streaming practices, so it clearly is a liability
It’s weird how corporate copyright assumptions have seeped to the mainstream and people assume that anything you do with your owned media is illegal unless you’re paying somebody.
If you live inside the US (or a state with trade agreements with the US) and are ripping physical media to store on your server and stream digitally, you are absolutely breaking the law. Doubly so if you are sharing that media with others outside your household.
'It's not a problem because I have nothing to hide' <- you are here.
Well, if you have an issue with people knowing you use Plex at all, then... tough luck, because I hate to tell you this, but a media server needs a client and it's a vanishingly small group of people that will use either Plex or Jellyfin clients and not let Apple, Google, LG, Samsung or whatever other device is running the client software that this is happening.
I give zero craps about whether Google knows I or anybody else uses Plex via their login because they already know this form the Google Play Store, along with the manufacturer of every TV we collectively own.
And for the record I do not live in the US and the way their absolutely idiotic copyright loopholes apply here is very much in question. It doesn't get tested in court much because the times it has been it didn't go particularly great for copyright holders. Private copying owned media is a right regulated by law here and I will continue to do so. If a corporation wants to deliberate with our local courts whether my owning a drive that happens to not be super picky about on-disc DRM I don't have anything particularly intense going on this week.
Ironically, in our own dumb legal implementation we are allowed to back up movies but there is a carved exception for software, so making a copy of a game you own is a bigger deal. Go figure.
