Plex now want to SELL your personal data
-
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’ve had a lifetime plex pass for several years. Once I tried Jellyfin a few months ago it was all over. My “I’ll run both just in case” period lasted a week or two.
The downside is that Jellyfin will take more setup on your end, especially if you want to let other people connect securely to your server.
The upside is performance and responsiveness. Once I started using it I decided Plex had to go, even if I have to drive to each family member’s house to fix their shit. It was like moving between Linux and Windows, as far as one being designed to work and the other being designed to satisfy dozens of corporate KPIs.
Fortunately the setup for the end user is just as simple once your server is good to go. They just need URL, login, and password.
And since it’s all open source, there’s some fun diversity in clients. I use Finamp specifically for music, and there are audiobook focused ones.
-
It's this old link, eh?
Well, just because they closed the issue (without resolving it), doesn't mean it does not speak to their views on security and client breaking changes
-
How big is that library supposed to be that it is larger than all public ones? There are some with 10'000s of videos.
We have over 15,000 videos in TV episodes, alone. Not counting movies.
So…yeah.
-
The sunken cost of buying a plexpass on sale for 39 dollars 15 years ago.
Hence the term "sunk cost fallacy".
-
Jellyfin was not a trivial set up for remote access
So, forwarding a port on your router was a difficult process?
Nginx/caddy, dynamic DNS, buying a domain, setting it up with cloudflare is well outside the capabilities of most people. Took me a few hours to figure out
-
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/One of the security upsides to plex is that any number of people can log in with the same credential.
That means that while Plex can harvest information- what account, what's being watched, IP address, device and player identifier- It doesn't know who to attach that information to. So you can get dozens or maybe hundreds of users polluting the same account with watch information. Less useful information to be sure.
-
sounds like a poorly optimized system tbh. My Plex instance loads within a few seconds. on roku, android, and web.
keep in mind I'm using nginx caching and some advanced configs.
I am using the Plex app on my LG TV, to be more precise. That's the WebOS version of Plex. On my phone and on the web, it loads instantly.
-
I have absolutely no experience with Jellyfin, what does the Kodi plugin do?
Or do you mean you have the Jellyfin addon installed in Kodi, so you can accsess Jellyfin from within Kodi?
I can access my Jellyfin library just like it was native kodi
-
Not to rain on your parade, but the Plex App on my TV, with a library of almost 40TB also loads in seconds
No rain here.
️
What TV is that? I have an LG OLED TV from 2019 running WebOS, so that's the version of Plex I am using.
My Plex library loads instantly on my phone and on the web.
-
I set up tailscale for remote access and it was pretty easy and painless. Maybe not as "average user" simple as plex, but no harder than setting up lan games to play across the internet that non techy people were doing in my high school 20 years ago.
Yeah with VPN it's more straightforward. I wanted it accessible without which was more involved. Honestly the average user doesn't even know what tailscale or wireguard are, so you are already advanced using those
-
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/And you can say no. Where’s the problem?
Also “personal data” is a bit of a stretch.
-
Cute of you to make such assumption based on zero evidence but just your feels.
I literally said "feels" lol
-
feels so much more illegal than just streaming for yourself tho
I mean you are literally hosting pirated content for anyone to see, is it denial or is it really less illegal? Yall mention multiple user accounts, if ppl pay you in any way you are now a bootlegger?
-
Seeing the replies in this thread it kinda makes me wonder what Plex actually has to do for these zealots to quit using their platform.
Like do they literally have to steal naked pictures of you and pass them around the office? Like wtf.
You can literally click “I do not agree” lol. Also the “personal data” is a hashed email (so they don’t get your email), ip address, and watch history. Not very “personal”, and not anything that violates your privacy or is of any concern to you.
-
Nginx/caddy, dynamic DNS, buying a domain, setting it up with cloudflare is well outside the capabilities of most people. Took me a few hours to figure out
So if I'm not behind a double nat, I can just forward a port like a civilized person?
-
You can’t argue that the guy saying he has a problem with Google’s sign-in specifically has a point and also say that the data mining happening within Plex is WAY more intrusive.
Those are not mutually exclusive statements. In fact, mostly it just makes you an idiot for not having a problem with either.
It is worse than an auth method that isn't maintained by a known data whore like google. It's substantially worse when you're using it with another data whore service. For those of us who administrate remote services and care about not being beholden to google's data addiction, it is absolutely not a good thing to provide it as the default auth method, which is what the OP was saying. Even if jellyfin included it, I would immediately disable it. Especially since, as a server administrator, I have a vested interest in keeping the activity of that server private. Even if the specific details of the media on it aren't exposed, I don't want any party with conflicting interests to my own to know what users are associated with my server. Just having a dozen or so users connected through jellyfin to my IP would be enough for a motivated legal entity to look at me, and I have more than just a private media server to worry about. Is it likely to happen? Probably not. But why would I even risk it?
If you have a source for how apparently US law is directly applicable to any country they have a trade agreement with feel free to point me to this insane new paradigm of international law, though.
I don't have a source for you, but typically using a US-based platform can give US authorities a jurisdictional hook, especially if the rights holders are US-based or can show commercial harm. That is why US based web services are extraordinarily strict with all of their users, even those who live outside the US. I'm not even saying it's common, just that it could happen. I seem to remember operators of p2p services getting nabbed at customs while traveling back in the day - it wasn't illegal where they were, but it sure as fuck was in the US and they were extremely interested in putting the kabash on it.
No question that plex is a more convenient service, but if you have the tech literacy to manage something that's completely private that is only marginally more complicated, why the fuck wouldn't you? Then again, maybe if you think you're more tech literate than you are, it doesn't seem all that simple.
Man, you keep thinking that taking digs about how it's all a skill issue is either an argument or an insult, and I keep reminding you that even if there was a skill issue at play (and there wasn't), being hard or annoying to use is the actual problem. If your UX allows for skill issues in making a straightforward setup run then it's a UX issue.
Also, me using Plex to host copies of my own media legally is not the same as operating a P2P service. But if it's any consolation I have no intention to set foot on that hellhole anyway, given that US authorities seem to not need copyright overreach to throw you in a room with no windows indefinitely these days. Good luck with that.
Oh, and yes, those are mutually exclusive. Or mutually inclusive, to be more accurate. If your concern is the govenrment overreach implications of having a portion of your data leaked, worrying about a smaller leak along the way of actively generating a larger leak is entirely pointless. Conversely, I'd argue that if you have a dozen users and are terrified that the cops are going to come and raid the... I'm gonna say meth lab you're running on the side, we're back to the conversation about how cool you are with that dozen users having their Jellyfin clients running on a bunch of Android devices, Smart TVs, Windows boxes or whatever else.
Again, I keep struggling with the irony of this weird position having entirely bought into the narrative that self-hosting media is inherently illegal or dangerous. I came into this argument from the UX angle, you guys are increasingly convincing me that a significant disincentive for self-hosting to become mainstream is that its entire community is convinced that they are doing something wrong, apparently. It's not that I hadn't noticed how central to the whole thing a bunch of P2P-specific paraphernalia happens to be, but I wasn't ready for the gatekeeping to come with a side of edgy 90s we're-so-bad hack-the-world stuff.
-
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/Damn. They’re really ripping the copper wiring out of the walls.
-
I don't mean to add fuel to the fire with Gentry or anything but I can speak towards my experience with jellyfin here. When I started with jellyfin I didn't know a lot about networking or even self hosting, I pretty much jumped in blind. Although it's fair to say I am not new to technical concepts/troubleshooting so my experience is definitely going to be smoother than a non technical user.
For context I am using truenas scale to host jellyfin and I was able to install it, configure it, and get my library going on the first try and it was definitely under 20 minutes. Once I decided I wanted remote access to my library it wasn't super crazy to figure out tail scale (maybe 30 minutes?) and have that available too. It might not have been under an hour total but coming from almost nothing as a newer user I didn't really experience a lot of turbulence.
That's valid.
When I first got whiffs of Plex becoming not-so-great, (maybe 3 years ago?) I struggled to get jellyfin up and running. It felt less polished.
But as of last month when I recently installed JF in an incus container, it has come a long way. Very easy setup.
-
So if I'm not behind a double nat, I can just forward a port like a civilized person?
imagine not being behind a CGNAT in current year
if you're not paying a fucking mint for a real IPv4 address never tell anyone, it's a mistake.
-
I just changed the Fw rule DST nat mangle port and told him to use jellyfin.
Are you also a fellow MikroTik/RouterOS user?
Haha, yes I am. I think I'm on my 8th year moving on from pfsense, still rocking the rb4011.
Learning curve is something else, but mikrotik just sits there and works.
