Plex now want to SELL your personal data
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For those who aren't quite ready to delete their accounts get, this link buried on their privacy page can let you opt out: https://www.plex.tv/vendors-us
Not sure why "us" is in the URL, I'm in Canada
Didn’t even need to dig. As soon as I opened Plex in my browser, it gave me a giant full screen “hey we want to sell your data. Do you consent” page. I disagree with data sale in general, but at least they didn’t go out of their way to bury the opt out. In fact, they actually went out of their way to present the notification in a way that was impossible to miss. If you’re capable of reading, you’ll know what the popup is for.
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Need a jellyfin PS5 app
And a Samsung TV app. There’s an entire branch of Samsung TVs that require side loading to get a Jellyfin app installed.
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So the Google login could be a problem by itself, and the Plex data gathering would be a much bigger problem by itself, but both together would just mean you are exactly as screwed as with just one.
That's almost exactly what I was saying, except that using both actually increases your risk just by capturing more detailed logs of your server activity and the associated accounts. Your users could use anonymous usernames or share login credentials if they wanted to without it, but being forced to use google SSO means each user is personally identifiable even if they're protecting themselves otherwise. It's the same reason I would never use google's SSO for another web service if I had an alternative, even if for something completely innocuous. Why give them extra information about my web activity and tie it directly to my verified account, even if it's something trivial like what plex servers i use or how I'm watching my media and on what devices?
But mostly my point was that using google's SSO by itself, with your own self-hosted server is dumb because it unnecessarily exposes you where you otherwise would have been fine. That was the whole point of this conversation - not that plex was specifically bad because they used it, but that it isn't a desirable feature for plex or for a self-hosted alternative. Maybe you just misunderstood that, idk.
cosplay
Where I am people are being black bagged for less than just breaking DRM. I could be disappeared on my way to work tomorrow just for saying something silly like "from the river to the sea". Maybe you're privileged enough to feel secure in your legal standing, but that's not one that I share. Like I said, i've gotten burned for using napster when I was young and dumb, and I thought I was safe then, too.
For most people this side of the pacific, ripping DVD's for personal use is not legal, and streaming them to others is even less so. Any service hosted within the US is subject to that law. You being outside the US but using a private service hosted within it puts you squarely within that jurisdiction, but since you fancy yourself a lawyer, and since IDGAF anyway, i'll let you mull it over for yourself. If all you're afraid of losing is access to your plex account then all the power to ya. I just don't agree with that value judgement.
I'm honestly not sure why you feel so cavalier about your data privacy. If you're really one of those 'i've got nothing to hide' folks, I have a larger gripe with you than what a silly 'plex vs jellyfin' debate can cover. It's incredibly shortsighted and normalizes apathy and complacency. There's no reason to be exposing your private server usage data to private for-profit companies, especially when that activity is already borderline legal at best. My actual fear is that plex gains mainstream attention and comes under legal scrutiny. we go through another tightening of the screws because our bloated media market is bleeding and dragging the rest of the stock market down with it. That's what happened with napster and the record industry, and it'll happen with streamers and plex if we're not a little more discrete.
Yes, rip your dvds. Yes, share them with whoever you want. Go pirate some animes or download a car, IDGAF. But don't pretend like you're somehow safe from punitive copyright action just because you're off in Greenland or whereverthefuck. You'll end up teaching normies bad habits and poor judgement when it comes to protecting their data privacy.
Again, just don't be a dumbass about it.
I do care about self-hosting as a viable commercial alternative
Well there you go. I would really rather self-hosting not even be commercial.
I am not ready to give up on the changes required to get there just to feel cool on the Internet
Lmao yes look at me and my data hygiene, you'll never be as cool as me. It's clear that you have some misgivings about FOSS as a concept, I guess you can feel good about donating your money to a for-profit entity as a way to stick it to those hippies. God forbid I had tried selling you on linux in this thread, that could have really snowballed.
I mean, my Plex server is on a Fedora machine, it seems to be doing fine. I have gotten into arguments here about how frustrating it is that Linux advocates pretend every usability problem for Windows users is solved and that "just use Mint" is a valid solution to that issue. If you want to know how that goes, it goes a lot like this conversation.
On topic, using any external login or remote access third party service for your self hosted services is a significant change in how much info is not controlled by you, nobody is arguing that. There's a conversation to be had about whether that's worth it for most users. Like I said earlier, is it a good thing for Home Assistant to provide a paid subscription service that will handle that for you? For most people I'd say yes, it's still a much safer, more flexible alternative to Google's or Amazon's ecosystem, so why not? Baby steps.
But if you're already using a commercial service that already has a proprietary login then no, it doesn't matter. Plex already knows which clients go to your server. It does not need Google for anything here, having Google's SSO doesn't give them any information they already have. It does give that to Google, but if your concern is the cops are going to bang on your door for all your illegal pixels that you stream then you're just as boned. It's borderline irresponsible to pretend otherwise.
As for the "I have nothing to hide" thing... look, if you want to have this argument with someone else go pester them instead. It's not "I have nothing to hide", it's "this commercial service that I use does something that is legal and I intend to both take advantage of that and defend my right to own my media". How you get "I have nothing to hide" out of that is your own pretzel logic.
I have a right to store, backup and access my own media and to keep a copy of it for private use. I will exercise that right regardless of how many US corpos pretend that hey own the very concept of showing video to people. I am doing nothing illegal here and of the perfectly legal software options to do this perfectly legal thing I chose the one that had better usability for my family to be comfortable using it. This comes at the cost of an external service storing some of our data, just like our Netlfix and Disney+ subscriptions do, but since I'm not keeping a media server performatively that is a tradeoff we have made on a bunch of places because not everybody who lives here is willing to do homework to be able to use their devices. That cool with you?
For the record, I don't have any misgivings about FOSS as a concept. I do have remarkable contempt for people who want it to keep being a minority option because they like being in the secret treehouse and don't want everybody else learning about it. Widespread, successful FOSS doesn't look like half-baked UX and hobbyist programmers working for nothing in their spare time, and I would certainly like to see a landscape where alongisde hobby projects we have a solid stable of financially sustainable professionally made open source alternatives that anybody can get into. Jellyfin isn't even the worse offender here. If nothing else it's frustrating because it could be a more approachable sustainable alternative in the vein of your Blenders or Home Assistants... but it's kinda not, and that sucks.
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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/It's interesting to see the different kind of comments here and on Redshit.
Here, people are smart and they are switching to Jellyfin. On Redshit, if people mention Jellyfin in a comment they get downvoted right away.
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There is a native Apple TV app, I didn't migrate from plex until there was and I migrated over 18 months ago. It's called Swiftfin.
Swiftfin is basically a pre-beta release: it's barely usable and doesnt' support HDR or DolbyVision.
The lack of an AppleTV app isthe only thing that is stopping me switchwing from Plex.
I tried infuse and worked perfectly, but sadly it doens't support multi-profiles (on Plex i have a separate profile with kid's movies) -
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.
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Can someone clue me in on the reason why anyone would prefer Plex instead of Jellyfin?
It just works and has a native app for basically everything.
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Then, you are completely out of touch with how most people use computers.
wrote last edited by [email protected]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
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Because Jellyfin et al are all still very much "open source projects" in terms of UI/UX and it is still "missing" so many features.
For me? The big reasons why I just use plex boil down to:
- Maybe 80% of the time, I can cache an episode or a movie locally on my tablet when I am going on travel. This is great if I am doing a rewatch of something or don't super care about The Experience and just want to watch the next few episodes of a show in the evening. With Plex, this is trivial. With SOME of the third party jellyfin apps, this can be sort of worked around but then becomes a hassle to sync watch statistics (which episodes were watched or even where I left off because a buddy wanted to go out for drinks).
- Remote watching is similarly a mess. Plex has pretty okay-good systems to treat my home server as a "cloud" resource with a single forwarded port. While even that is very questionable security wise, Jellyfin is still "figure it out yourself". Which can be done with setting up a vpn or using Tailscale but adds additional complexities.
- Plenty of other "quirks" along similar lines
My personal opinion? For something that only "tech savvy" people are using more or less locally, Jellyfin is fine. For something that "just works"? There is no competition with Plex. And considering how many of the Jellyfin workarounds end up being "just download a copy of the file locally and watch it in VLC"... why would I use Jellyfin at all in that case when I could otherwise just mount a samba share or use Kodi (that is the latest incarnation of XBMC or whatever the samba share frontend we all used to watch porn on our playstations was, right?).
To be clear. I check in on Jellyfin probably every other year at this point? I WANT an alternative to Plex. But... Jellyfin ain't it.
I feel exactly the same as you, but i'd like to add a number 4 point:
Plex has an offical app for every system/SO -
Jellyfin is a fully self hosted drop in. That means it's up to the server operator to handle everything. You would still tell your mom to just install the Jellyfin app on her TV with the one additional step in your server address which you would tell her.
But yes, you as the operator have to do some extra things like implementating a reverse proxy and if hosting out of your home make necessary network configuration changes to accommodate this access.
You as server operator also have to check what device your mom has and point her to what app download, because Jellyfin doesn't have an app for everything
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This is specifically related to watching their free content. You can opt out of the sale & sharing of said data, which is used to play you targeted ads when watching their free content. I am not a big fan, but this is the typical "free" TV spiel. Was there something that changed recently or is it just being recognized now?
They also serve you their version of the show with ads if you have the same show on your Plex. I have Ghost in the Shell S.A.C on Plex and I've never watched their version but it sure as shit showed up in my "continue watching". The same thing happened when my gf was watching Midsomer Murders.
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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/wrote last edited by [email protected]I miss when you could use something without it turning into spyware. Jellyfin it is then.
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And just like that we’re at silly made up hypothetical situations to drive fear and an agenda. That’s not even worth entertaining.
Btw these changes and the data that is shared/sold are only for plex’s hosted movies and shows - not your personal media collection.
We do not and will not collect information about content or titles in your personal media library or what you’ve played.
Personal media users: we do NOT, and will not, share or sell any information about the content and titles on or your use of a personal media server.
Source: link in the OP
And just like that we’re at silly made up hypothetical situations to drive fear and an agenda. That’s not even worth entertaining.
It's all hypothetical until it isn't anymore. You're literally the slowly boiled frog.
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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/honestly for my purposes, jellyfin is more than enough. Does everything I want. Even got the icons of the series I watch implemented in the player
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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.
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python -m http.server is still my media server of choice. It's never let me down.
I bet you'd like filebrowser. Cleaner interface while being minimal as http.server
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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.
Idunno why you don't think having an unique hash attatched to your data is no biggie. Especially if that hash is easily cracked in a few years by quantum computers.
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Like all companies complying with European data collection laws, they can't collect your data and have to delete anything they have collected.
They can't delete everything they've collected and they propaply don't.
In a few years the "do not agree" will dissapear anyway.
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Yeah that’s definitely true. I gladly pay for Emby and thing it’s worth every penny for how I use it. Jellyfin has got to be the best free+open one for sure.
I pay for emby too. It's only like £5 a month and it's worth every penny to me.
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Yeah. I love open source, but people kinda assume you have unlimited time to sink until this stuff. Apple has done a great job selling an intuitive experience that I need for the non technical people in my household. That being said, I don’t understand why AirPlay doesn’t just fucking work. Siri is also garbage.
And if I have to listen to one more person try and explain to me why I have the wrong router, mdns, multicast, IPv6 settings, etc, I’m gonna lose it. One person is like, “buy Uniquiti, that plays nice with Apple Home and never use your ISP router”. The next person is like “you idiot, why would you think Ubiquiti + Apple would ever work stick with your IPS router”. Even if they’re right, it’s a failure of Apple to design a system that requires an IT person to setup.
Thank you for listening to my rant.
I love open source, but people kinda assume you have unlimited time to sink until this stuff.
And if I have to listen to one more person try and explain to me why I have the wrong router, mdns, multicast, IPv6 settings, etc, I’m gonna lose it. One person is like, “buy Uniquiti, that plays nice with Apple Home and never use your ISP router”. The next person is like “you idiot, why would you think Ubiquiti + Apple would ever work stick with your IPS router”. Even if they’re right, it’s a failure of Apple to design a system that requires an IT person to setup.
Maybe if you had more time to sink into your Apple problem...
