Plex now want to SELL your personal data
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Nothing is ever truly free in this world. They gotta pay their bills too.
Yeah, and there are decent ways to do that, which many successful companies and individuals manage to pull off every day.
I have no horse in this race because I don’t use any of this stuff, but I despise the direction everything is going.
Human parasites are never happy with being well fed it seems. They aren’t happy unless they gorge until they get fat and explode, or they’re so greedy they end up killing their host.
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Emby rugpulled their users, that's why jellyfin exists at all.
Do you mind elaborating on that? It sounds like I got in on Emby after the rugpull. It works fine for me and I use it without the Connect (online account) feature.
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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.
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.
I inferred it from this:
Plex was one of the first things I hosted because all you have to do is installing like you would any local application and it just works
And anyway, plex and jellyfin have different media library configuration requirements. Even if you did them at the same time, you'd have to be kind of lucky to have configured them both on the same media volume correctly without reading any of the documentation or having experience with docker ACL rules.
Just as a for-instance (since I don't see any specifics), sharing a media volume across separated docker containers on linux requires mapping the same users and usergroups to each container. It's assumed you should know this, if you're deploying a stack of services on a server, because containers are designed to be isolated and secure - containers are restricted to accessing files in their approved ACL, so that a bad actor can't get access to a separate volume from a compromised service. One possible problem you were having (again, just a guess) is that jellyfin was assigning itself ownership of the files/folders on the media volume every time it did its scan, and Plex no longer had permission to access them. It actually doesn't matter which service was there first - as soon as you had two services accessing the same volume you would have run into this issue. It depends on how you configured both services, and if you gave them privileged access or mapped users properly, ect.
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
If you're running both services on a store-bought NAS, the problem could have also been a misunderstanding about the combined overhead requirement for the services. Without making any assumptions about how much thought you put into your configuration, I'd check that as a part of troubleshooting. But, again, seems like you don't give a fuck about troubleshooting your customized service stack and would rather use a ready-made product. That's fine.
turns out there are plenty of applications that are pretty agnostic about running inside of a container or not, Plex included.
Jellyfin included also. I'm not sure what the point you're making though.
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.
I agree it's redundant, which is why I personally only deploy jellyfin now. As far as jellyfin writing to your media drive...... Yea, I guess that is a difference between the services. This isn't really a problem if you configure your containers correctly, but if you don't want to mess with that stuff I can see why it might be an issue for you. Plex may be storing those files on its container volume instead of the mounted media volume, or it could be storing them on their remote server (it's been a while since I had plex running), which is a fine way to do it too. There are advantages to writing it to the media volume, but I won't bore you with that
Let alone say that if you didn’t build your car yourself you aren’t skilled enough to have one, which is the actually equivalence here.
Good thing nobody is telling you not to have a homelab or use selfhosted services. If you want to use Plex and only want to drive automatic transmissions, go for it. Doesn't change my preference or enthusiasm for jellyfin or manual transmissions, though. And given the opportunity, i'll still passionately debate the advantages to learning stickshift and open-sourced and customizable self-hosted applications. And if you give them a try and run into problems, i'll gladly help you try to solve them if you're willing to engage with it - but if you'd rather just complain about how much my preference sucks then i'll have no problem telling you to stick with what you know next time.
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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/Last shit they pulled I moved to Jellyfin. Today I deleted my Plex account.
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Yeah, but then you're not self-hosting, you're paying or using their free services to manage that for you.
wrote last edited by [email protected]::: spoiler spoiler
askldjfals;jflsad;
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From what Ive seen in arguments about this, Plex generally is more accessible with QoL and easier to understand interface for non-techie people to share with family/friends. Something thats hard for nerdy people to understand is that average people are perfectly fine paying for digital goods and services. An older well off normie has far more money than sense and will happily pay premiums just to not have to rub two braincells together with setup or for a nicer quality of experience. If you figure out how to make a very useful plug-an-play service that works without the end user of average intelligence/domain knowledge stressing about how to set up, maintain, and navigate confusing layouts, you've created digital gold.
This isn't the fault of open source services you can only expect so much polish from non-profit voulenteer. Its just the nature of consumer laziness/expectation for professional product standards and the path/product of least resistance.
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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??
Because it works. Call me in a few years when movies, TV shows, dvr recordings, live TV (with free, built-in guide support), and working picture support shows up. Oh, commercial removal too (again, built-in, just check a box). A not-shit setup process would be nice, too.
I've tried jf three times now across as many years, and it's still got that 'Linux developer feel' of a tool where the devs got what they need the most mostly-working, and just don't give a fuck about anything else - or a decent UI. No, blue boxes on a black background is not a decent UI. It wasn't when W8 launched, and it's not now. And when W8 is winning the competition, you've already lost.
Feature parity or the argument is moot.
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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.
That depends on if someone wants it enough to make it happen.
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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.
Setting up a server? Pretty darn easy.
Teaching all your friends and relatives to figure out what app to use and login with your dyndns random entry or IP address. Or even more difficult, using VPN.
It's not the hosting that's hard. It's the watching for non-tech people.
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Do you mind elaborating on that? It sounds like I got in on Emby after the rugpull. It works fine for me and I use it without the Connect (online account) feature.
wrote last edited by [email protected]For one, they moved from open source to closed source without notice.
https://web.archive.org/web/20181212104719/https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby/issues/3479
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Can someone clue me in on the reason why anyone would prefer Plex instead of Jellyfin?
End user management.
Essentially, accounts and passwords are not my problem.
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Setting up a server? Pretty darn easy.
Teaching all your friends and relatives to figure out what app to use and login with your dyndns random entry or IP address. Or even more difficult, using VPN.
It's not the hosting that's hard. It's the watching for non-tech people.
Maybe I'm just callous but I just don't see that as a problem myself. If I'm offering my own self hosted services for friends or family, the least they can do is put in some effort to learn how to use it. If they couldn't bother, that is their loss.
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::: spoiler spoiler
askldjfals;jflsad;
:::You called him a liar and then got pissy when he fired back. Grow a thicker skin or don't start shit.
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For one, they moved from open source to closed source without notice.
https://web.archive.org/web/20181212104719/https://github.com/MediaBrowser/Emby/issues/3479
wrote last edited by [email protected]Thanks for the info. I'm sure it'll also be useful to others reading the comments.
This sucks because, functionally-wise I have zero issues with Emby. But morally, this bothers me a lot. I thought it was going to just be because of the license (I think I paid $99 around Christmas a few years ago for a Lifetime license).
Guess I'll be switching to Jellyfin then and donating to the project. If I paid for Emby, there's no reason I can't donate to a free, open-source project being developed and maintained by volunteers.
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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/Man Plex when fully enshitified FAST!
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Can someone clue me in on the reason why anyone would prefer Plex instead of Jellyfin?
Years ago, I tried out Jellyfin (Emby at the time) and it couldn't do chromecasting with subtitles (probably fixed by now, this was a long time ago). Since I wanted to watch anime, I bought a Plex lifetime subscription instead, and I'm too lazy to switch.
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You called him a liar and then got pissy when he fired back. Grow a thicker skin or don't start shit.
wrote last edited by [email protected]::: spoiler spoiler
askldjfals;jflsad;
::: -
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.
I inferred it from this:
Plex was one of the first things I hosted because all you have to do is installing like you would any local application and it just works
And anyway, plex and jellyfin have different media library configuration requirements. Even if you did them at the same time, you'd have to be kind of lucky to have configured them both on the same media volume correctly without reading any of the documentation or having experience with docker ACL rules.
Just as a for-instance (since I don't see any specifics), sharing a media volume across separated docker containers on linux requires mapping the same users and usergroups to each container. It's assumed you should know this, if you're deploying a stack of services on a server, because containers are designed to be isolated and secure - containers are restricted to accessing files in their approved ACL, so that a bad actor can't get access to a separate volume from a compromised service. One possible problem you were having (again, just a guess) is that jellyfin was assigning itself ownership of the files/folders on the media volume every time it did its scan, and Plex no longer had permission to access them. It actually doesn't matter which service was there first - as soon as you had two services accessing the same volume you would have run into this issue. It depends on how you configured both services, and if you gave them privileged access or mapped users properly, ect.
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
If you're running both services on a store-bought NAS, the problem could have also been a misunderstanding about the combined overhead requirement for the services. Without making any assumptions about how much thought you put into your configuration, I'd check that as a part of troubleshooting. But, again, seems like you don't give a fuck about troubleshooting your customized service stack and would rather use a ready-made product. That's fine.
turns out there are plenty of applications that are pretty agnostic about running inside of a container or not, Plex included.
Jellyfin included also. I'm not sure what the point you're making though.
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.
I agree it's redundant, which is why I personally only deploy jellyfin now. As far as jellyfin writing to your media drive...... Yea, I guess that is a difference between the services. This isn't really a problem if you configure your containers correctly, but if you don't want to mess with that stuff I can see why it might be an issue for you. Plex may be storing those files on its container volume instead of the mounted media volume, or it could be storing them on their remote server (it's been a while since I had plex running), which is a fine way to do it too. There are advantages to writing it to the media volume, but I won't bore you with that
Let alone say that if you didn’t build your car yourself you aren’t skilled enough to have one, which is the actually equivalence here.
Good thing nobody is telling you not to have a homelab or use selfhosted services. If you want to use Plex and only want to drive automatic transmissions, go for it. Doesn't change my preference or enthusiasm for jellyfin or manual transmissions, though. And given the opportunity, i'll still passionately debate the advantages to learning stickshift and open-sourced and customizable self-hosted applications. And if you give them a try and run into problems, i'll gladly help you try to solve them if you're willing to engage with it - but if you'd rather just complain about how much my preference sucks then i'll have no problem telling you to stick with what you know next time.
Man, you're really itching to talk shop about specifics and complexities and it really isn't about that.
The guy said "why does anybody still consider Plex" about the slightly misleading privacy policy excerpt and a bunch of us pointed out UX and accessibility are reasons. This entire tangent spawns from me claiming I had technical issues on top of the UX stuff and you being super excited to assume it's a skill issue and maybe get to troubleshoot a bit.
Except it wasn't, I'm not particularly interested and the technical issues weren't even the primary reason I moved to something else.
For what it's worth, I barely remember what the setup was when I messed around with Jellyfin because I move things around a bunch and despite this conversation suddenly hinging on it, I didn't think much of it beyond "oh, this sucks, I guess I'll just do Plex instead". It was almost certainly not Plex and Jellyfin running simultaneously on two containers sharing resources, though. I have way too many loose computers bouncing around the house for this not to have been some test run natively installing it on whatever I had lying around, which is also why the Plex server I have now has been on three different machines since then (and is still running natively because why the hell not, being adamant that everything needs to be on some overdone docker setup is just nerds being nerds).
Look, I respect your hobbies, but I reserve the right to find you extremely annoying when you try to patronize people who are actually trying to get shit done just because you're excited at the opportunity to exlpain the difference between a bind and a volume at someone whether they need the explanation or not. The reality of it is if you want to be nerdy and all hobbyist about having a home server (I fully reject the term "lab") that rabbit hole goes deep. You have tons of runway to go nuts about dedicated server hardware and networking software while letting people who just kinda want to be able to open their media without having to plug in a physical drive do their thing.
Jellyfin doesn't HAVE to be complicated. It's not good that it is. All this tier of software that does useful stuff to replace corporate subscription crap doesn't need to be any harder to use and maintain than your average Windows application. Everybody would benefit from a concerted effort to take the faff out of it. And I pinky promise that you'll still have a lifelong hobby if and when that happens.
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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.
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.
First:
- not if you install these applications through fdroid or install from source
- not if you block dns queries that report to those servers
- not if you access the service via webURL
but also, it's not just that they know you use plex or jellyfin, it's that they know which plex server you use and from what devices you stream from. If, for example, plex decides they want to limit the number of households can stream from a single server (like they've already done), all they'd have to do is lock or limit people's google SSO to that server. They could also report which users are associated with servers engaged in illegal activity when requested, or they could region lock their services or specific media IP's by request from copyright holders..... There's a ton of abuses that are made possible by even that tiny bit of information they share/collect.
You might not care about it, but a lot of us do. Nobody is trying to convince you to stop using Plex, we're just trying to explain why we really do not want to use it ourselves
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.
I have no idea where you live, but plex is an american company. Plex will 100% be forced to comply with copyright takedown requests, and could absolutely penalize you for infringing on american copyright law. Could you be arrested? Maybe not. But there are still a ton of ways you could get fucked because Plex has enshittified their service and has made zero commitments to protecting you or your identity.
we are allowed to back up movies
small thing, but in the US this is technically allowed, but as soon as you format-shift the media (e.g. rip a dvd into a digital format) it is no longer protected. It's assumed that 'backing up movies' is literally 'duplicate the media in exactly the same format it was originally purchased in'. On top of that, it's also doubly illegal to then share that media, even as a direct stream via a home server. Idk where you live but I'm actually am not aware of any country who allows for your stated use (unless you're somewhere without extradition or trade relations with the US like Russia or Cuba, because they don't give a fuck about US legal claims). Not that it's commonly prosecuted even in the US, but US companies routinely get takedown requests for that shit and Plex will absolutely throw you under the bus.
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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.
That's exactly what it does. I got the prompt on my system, I said no, and it said ok and everything proceeded on like normal.
