Comment on Plex now will SELL your personal data
Selfhoster1728@infosec.pub 6 days ago
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??
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.
Yeah, but then you’re not self-hosting, you’re paying or using their free services to manage that for you.
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
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
I am a devops engineer and application architect who spends their entire day developing automated docker deployments for custom applications from scratch and I manage all our reverse proxies and TLS termination and certificates.
5 years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what a docker container really was. Thankfully migrating legacy apps to docker on Linux hosts is my full time job and it has allowed me to become proficient enough in a fairly short amount of time.
We all have to start somewhere and shitting on someone for not knowing something now will dissuade them from ever learning it and potentially remove a future contributor to the open source tech stack before they ever even get started.
I’ve definitely pulled my hair out with docker too. Banged my head against the wall for a couple days before finally giving up.
I’m not ridiculously tech savvy, but I’ve tinkered with Linux since I was young, daily drive it on my laptop. I’m not afraid of the command line, and I’m smart enough to search for help and guides when I need it.
But something about docker just breaks my brain. Maybe I’m too old and there’s too much abstract thought required, I don’t know. But I can’t figure it out.
IMO it was my hardware on the first tries. Not sure what your problem was, but after digging around I found something that loosely indicated that my hardware was too old or something - it didn’t play well with the onboard graphics or similar. But the second hardware set I tried it on was far newer, and after all the installation was complete I got a black screen. Every time. No matter which guide I used, no matter what dependencies I thought might be missing or whatever I tried to get it working. A hair pulling experience indeed.
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. 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 is a locked down proprietary piece of shit, 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
I’m not a hardcore tech person and this is exactly the issue for me as well.
I want to be able to stream my music collection when I’m away from home without having to get an associate’s degree in networking.
Tailscale makes this easy if you are only user.
Easy if the device you’re trying to listen on has a tailscale app and a JellyFin app, which is unlikely unless you’re using your phone or a tablet/pc.
I’ll look into Tailscale then. I’m guessing there’s something funky about adding additional users. I would eventually like to add one or two other people.
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
True though that’s less server operator and more “just being helpful to your mom”. That said it seems nowadays that a Jellyfin app is available on most devices/ecosystems (or maybe I just don’t have experience with enough devices to have an accurate idea).
Since you need to self-host Jellyfin, then you are responsible for making the service public.
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.
“install this app on your tv and log in”, which is exactly what Plex does
Yes, but that person has to create an account. Everyone has to create an account. With Plex. Some people I know immediately say no, others are annoyed that plex would try and shake them down for money.
If you configure Jellyfin, all that goes away. THEN they can simply download the app and login.
I make the account for them. Then I log in as them and set it up so they only see my server. Then I send them the credentials and have them login
So I told people download app enter this url and login. I even send out an email inviting them so they can click the link and create their own username and password. Then if they forget their password they can ask for a reset link.
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”,
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.
Does it work on a smart tv or roku or whatever?
Yeah they have apps on all the platforms.
So I searched, and all of the results were talking about setting up a VPN or a reverse proxy or whatever.
The best thing is, you can’t use a reverse proxy with it, it doesn’t even support it.
Odd, since my Jellyfin sits behind a reverse proxy.
Oh, right, it was basic auth (behind a reverse proxy, or even in general) that Jellyfin doesn’t support and isn’t planned to support IIRC.
I don’t even know what a reverse proxy is
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
Agreed. I have a dozen or so people using my Plex. There is no conceivable way I’m going to get my less tech literate friends and family to use jellyfin, much less am I going to find a way to set it up for remote access with my limited knowledge. Plex is just too convenient right now.
Damn, I was with you until the unnecessary vegan bashing.
Ok but there are a million SSO options out there - just because someone doesn’t want to allow google as a SSO provider doesn’t mean they’re telling anyone they have to switch fucking email services.
If you want a remote service to handle your authentication you don’t have to use google. I feel like that’s something I shouldn’t have to point out in a self-hosting community on an open-source and federated social media platform.
ITT: bunch of nerds with literally no friends or family to share media with lol
telling your friends and loved ones to switch email providers over your crusade
It has nothing to do with email
It’s not a personal crusade. Everyone should be trying to get people away from Google. They are an absolutely fucked corporation who makes a fortune spying on you and everyone you know.
So you don’t do a lot of tech support. Nice.
👍
Sounds more of an user problem than a jellyfin problem? If they can’t remember their login I’ll just not add them to jellyfin.
The overall vast majority of everyone is completely tech illiterate. We can blame them for their lack of tech skills all we want but that won’t change anything. Jellyfin needs a better UX before it’s feasible to use over Plex when sharing libraries with other users.
Let’s not act like a user and password is some revolutionary new technical concept. They can remember it for their email provider if they can access the plex link. So why jot jellyfin? I think the UX of Jellyfin is more than acceptable in this regard. Sure I wouldn’t mind they added this feature but i don’t see it as a must have.
Conversely, the average FOSS programmer has no idea how to either design for simplicity or document for the novice.
@Decq @Jimmycakes ehh helping people every 6 months of so since they forgot their password. Isn't that bad. I have 10 users and have had to tell people their password maybe four times over four years. Not that bad.
Well yes I know, but that kind of proofs a sign in link is not that important right? :) surely not a deal breaker as they postulated above.
Exactly, we dont add them to jellyfin, we add them to plex because its easier for them lol.
Fair enough, i just have very limited patience for incompetence. if they cant figure out how to remember their user and password. I don’t want to have to deal with them at all.
Cool story bro you’re such a big man telling grandma she’s cut off. Tough guy over here. Absolute unit of a guy.
You can install a plugin to add SSO.
Did you notice that they’re using a local connection? Still requires VPN/reverse proxy to get it outside the home.
They didn’t mention it in the post I reacted to.
But both of your suggestions are excellent solutions to the problem.
@Jimmycakes @Selfhoster1728 they learn pretty fast and the calls stop. Everyone says it's hard I have very tech illerate people using it and yes I get some calls but not alot. And they managed to login way easier then I thought. I think everyone is overblowing how hard Jellyfin is. I mean most people know how to login to a website.
I think most of the people complaining about jellyfin being difficult either haven’t tried it for at least a year or are trying to use it alongside their plex service without knowing how to configure them properly.
Which is fair, I just didn’t realize how many people were using plex that didn’t have an interest in learning remove service deployment.
My family/friends uses it on TV all they do is scan the qr code on plex and it logs them in and basically keeps them logged in forever. On jellyfin it logs out randomly. I run a dedicated Nas with 40tb half filled with media. I started on jellyfin and switched over to plex and never looked back. Just the fact that half the people in my replies think the main use case is on a Pc tells you everything you need to know. It’s perfectly fine for tech literate people for everyone else plex is superior.
I would not let anyone access my self hosted stuff who is not using a password manager and secure passwords.
I’m actually fascinated/frightened by the number of people here who are apparently comfortable running an exposed remote service on their personal network without enough tech knowledge to manage user auth themselves or maintain a stack with shared volumes…
Also the people that know how to set that all up and still expose a Jellyfin server to the public internet
I think most of the reason people are using Plex is that they don’t have to expose services. Plex handles all the nat traversal and whatnot for them.
Tailscale
I will not make myself the tech guy for half my friends and family, just because I can’t share Jellyfin safely without a vpn
That’s fair but tailscale isn’t a vpn (although it does use wiregaurd protocol), it was also designed to be extremely easy to setup and it’s free for up to 100 devices.
Again it’s fair if you don’t want to mess with it
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 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.
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.
For me it’s a trade-off: yes Plex is less good than Jellyfin from a data/cost perspective. But so far the UI of Plex (which is not perfect mind you), availability of Plexamp (which honestly is very very good), and the fact that I don’t have to pay for it anymore after buying lifetime swings the scale towards Plex for me.
If Plex somehow canceled my lifetime or forced ads on my shows or something, that would be a line — but making me opt out of selling my data is not that line for me.
Different taste on the UI front I guess. I thought the default Plex was awful, couldn’t stand it. Jellyfin can be a bit messy though
Plexamp is pretty great. It’s my streaming music player of choice.
After gpm shit the bed… I vowed to never have another streaming music service.
Plexamp it is.
As I said, I’ve yet to find a selfhosting solution half as good as PlexAmp. It’s very, very good and arguably a better service than normal Plex
Maybe you’ve tried it already, but navidrome is a great purpose built music streamer. I was using subsonic back in the day, then airsonic, then airsonic advanced. When I first got on navidrome it was a tough pill to swallow since I never maintained my tags, but I gave a little time here and there to comb through it and in the end it feels like a worthwhile investment. It paid off a little bit more when I adopted lyrion music server and squeeze players for local playback around the home since this organizes by the same tags (mostly), so the whole library is kind of plug and play with things that honor the same tags.
Who downvoted you?
Anyway, if you have directory-based music organization, Navidrome won’t take that sadly. However, it will take m3u playlists.
So I can just ls playlistdir/* > Playlist.m3u and get that directory as a playlist. Simple, lazy solution.
Oh, you can also add internet radios to Navidrome.
And one cool trick, which is also pretty good to test out Navidrome without effort, in Termux it is already in the repos, so you can just effort-free apt install navidrome, run it and play around.
Notable config: EnableInsightCollector = ‘false’
www.navidrome.org/docs/getting-started/insights/
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.
I just use Jellyfin for this too, not sure I follow the issue but I haven’t used Plex since migrating
I don’t mean to diminish your comment, but I just went through the setup process for both Plex and jellyfin (moving to new hardware) and there was no significant difference between the setups.
Maybe this wasn’t the case a few years ago, but jellyfin is just a setup, point to libraries, and enable hardware accel.
what? It’s not like everyone needs to run jeyfin at home. the oy thing you need to use is the jeyfin webapp, which I don’t understand how is it more complicated than netflix or any other similar service. you log in, pick a movie and hit play. that’s it.
Plex never worked outside my network so I’m not worried about that on Jellyfin
Jellyfin is basically as easy to use as plex within the same network. I’ve set up both dueing the past 6 months. The only big difference is that plex is much more of a pain to work through port forwarding.
“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.
Same with ke, 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 streams from me for free since I have plex pass already, and its easy to share without having to pass around my ip address.
What’s actually bad about it?
Like, this is something you opt into and is only relevant if you’re watching their ad supported stuff, which I don’t know anyone who watches that over their own media on Plex.
And honestly, every “bad” thing I’ve ever heard about Plex has been the same thing, something that sounds horrible until you understand it
I’ll switch to jellyfin as soon as it works nearly as well.
But for the moment it’s missing a lot of features compared to Plex.
Here’s why I still use Plex: for me Jellyfin hasn’t been easy to work the way I want it to. I mostly access my media on an Nvidia Shield, and the Jellyfin Android TV app just refuses to play certain videos; I can play them if I use VLC as an external player, but not within the app itself. The more pressing issue is that Jellyfin just refuses to play 5.1 audio, and downmixes everything to stereo. I have other issues, but these are the ones that prevent me from using it.
For me Plex just works.
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 have Plex running alongside Jellyfin.
When transcoding video, Plex uses an extra 5 watts of power. Jellyfin uses an extra 55 watts.
Jellyfin also has security holes for accessing videos via URL without being authenticated.
I don’t feel like Jellyfin is ready for being exposed to the internet.
Because this is the selfhosted community, not the FOSS community. That being said, yeah don’t use Plex.
There’s no jellyfin app on my TV.
Probably because it works well, and has working clients on everything at this point. For some, a one-time fee was worth it when it was cheaper.
Sharing is also easier, as your friends just sign up to a plex account and you share your library with them. No need to send them an ip address and port, or fqdn that you have to maintain if your isp changes your ip address. It has its benefits, tbh, and the core sharing features still work for streaming. All the extra crap you can just turn off.
That why I think its still popular.
It’s already setup, and a lack of motivation/time/energy/urgency to make the change…
Jellyfins UI being only mouse based is garbage. Using it on Xbox for instance is terrible.
I completely agree. I thought Plex would be fast in the collective rearview mirror as soon as they started forcing connections to their servers, pay-walling, etc. I also had issues with the database corrupting and causing huge slowdowns. I spent days trying and failing to preserve my ratings, watch data, etc.
In the end, I switched to a much simpler setup of an NFS/CIFS share accessed by Kodi on my Nvidia Shield TV. If Kodi chokes (happened once since 2017), I can just wipe the app and/or reinstall and then import the local metadata (XML or NFO IIRC). That takes about five minutes. It just works. Kodi also gives me access to the IAGL, so that’s a huge plus.
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.
I don’t know why people use dishwashers. It’s in the kitchen. A lawn mower is a no brainer, yet people still use dishwashers??
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 :-(
The point for me is, that I have an acient synology NAS (ds214play) which acts as my media server. There is a community made plex package which I can install easily. As far as I have seen, there is no way to install jellyfin on this NAS, as it doesn’t support docker
Can’t access remote unless u setup port forwarding, NAT rule etc etc. Too much work with jelly bin, plus it looks like 1990s UI created by illegal IPTV distributors
It might be because of security.
I don’t use either service. Do they serve the same purpose?
apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 6 days ago
The sunken cost of buying a plexpass for 39 dollars 15 years ago.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 6 days 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.
Condiment2085@lemm.ee 5 days ago
Yeah great perspective. I think we all need to have this perspective more as many tech companies will randomly change their minds on their products.
Kind of like how I got free photo backup on my first two pixels. It was a nice feature, I’m sad it’s gone, but it’s fine.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 5 days ago
Did they really kill off free photo backup? That’s so incredibly shitty, they even compressed them!
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 5 days ago
Did they really kill off free photo backup? That’s so incredibly shitty, they even compressed them!
apfelwoiSchoppen@lemmy.world 6 days ago
Same.
jagermo@feddit.org 6 days ago
Plex is easier to run on older NAS systems, but yeah - that was me :) but i switched to jellyfin, finally
Mondez@lemdro.id 6 days ago
Hence the term “sunk cost fallacy”.
nonetheweiser@lemm.ee 6 days ago
I stuck with Emby for way too long for this reason. I spent $50 in 2017. Gotta get my money’s worth no matter how broken their app was.