In todays episode of “Plex enshittifies” Plex employee breaks ToS.
Source: forums.plex.tv/t/…/917736
Submitted 5 weeks ago by Sunny@slrpnk.net to selfhosted@lemmy.world
https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/22c7baa2-4941-4473-80f9-6dfec3a9cbf7.png
In todays episode of “Plex enshittifies” Plex employee breaks ToS.
Source: forums.plex.tv/t/…/917736
Well this thread is an absolute shitshow.
Jellyfin is great, but if you refuse to let yourself understand that Plex’s ease of setup for remote access is a point in its favour - especially when sharing with non-tech savvy people - then you’re just as bad as the supposed “Plex shills”.
Plex is well on the enshittification train, and I’ve always been a bit concerned about how private it may or may not be, but there’s absolutely no way I’d have been able to share a Jellyfin instance with my grandfather, especially as his dementia got worse.
I tried jellyfin but it isn’t even close to as a good as plex
Same as my experience
Emby’s better than both, but jellyfin folks are probably going to crucify me for saying that.
How so?
Yo dad, heres the login:
username: dad
password: Pa$$TheP0pIf it asks for a URL on the first screen input the following URL:
https://jellyfin.domain.tld/
If you (or a relative) can’t manage that, I’d be afraid to even let you handle a car or open a bank account.
Can’t imagine you relative doesnt also have to create a plex account somewhere to then be invited to the plex share or input the URL to request access.
For the record, I fucking hate Plex.
But this is a disingenuous simplification of where the gap is.
Me, my brother-in-law, and friend all share our libraries with the same elderly relatives.
The GAP is that great grandma has to log in/out between servers to find content that may or may not be on an individual server. Plex lets you search/aggregate from all sources without having to jockey credentials and servers.
It’s not a giant ask. I heard a fucking absolutely brain-dead take that “that would require a centralized server which is against Jellyfins core ideology”.
So, I dunno. Maybe it isn’t YOUR use case, but it’s MY use case. Doesn’t make me a shill. I’m still pissed as hell.
But don’t fucking pretend that there is feature parity when there isn’t, and don’t accuse me of being a shill just because Jellyfin literally doesn’t support my use case. I WISH it did. I HATE PLEX.
They won’t even get to the login screen.
All my relatives seem to have Hisense VIDAA TVs. There’s a plex app on the store. Jellyfin would require an external device like a Chromecast or HTPC to use it.
Assuming you set it up for SSL, and you own and manage your own domain, and they’re using a computer. Easy. So for the 10% it’s cake.
How’s it look for the rest?
Oh cool so you’re ok with opening ports on your server to the internet with no authentication. Good for you. Most of us with the technical knowledge of hosting a media server know better.
I as an arch using turbonerd absolutely love jellyfin and how I can make it do what I want.
I run plex too, because the support I’d have to provide to family members when they need a password reset, or the jellyfin app doesn’t work right on their new Hisense smart TV would be the death of me.
This. Having the provide the support is what stops me from dropping plex entirely. I host jellyfin for the devices I control, and plex for my family and friends, all pointing to the same media.
Not that bad. It’s been about the same for Plex maybe less. Have had lots of Plex isn’t working when their servers where down.
I have had very old and non techie people setup Jellyfin. Putting a URL in a box is not actually rocket science. I thought it would be way harder but they did it.
idunno jellyfin was stupid easy to set up and works for me. Plex seems terrible.
“Reviews” but there’s only one.
This is probably some employee who genuinely likes the U.I.
An actual company-sponsored campaign would NOT use names from actual employees.
Corporations drill it deep into your head that you do not positively promote your own products or negatively review competitor products without both making it clear that you (1) work for $Corp; and (2) are sharing your own, personal opinion.
Giving the benefit of the doubt to Plex, they suck at training employees about social media policies.
Corporations drill it deep into your head that _you do not positively promote your own products or negatively review competitor products
This isn’t a general or global thing. I have yet to be told above in any place I’ve worked, and one place even asked people to write fake reviews on Trustpilot/job sites
Are we even sure it’s the same person?
“Plex respects their employees autonomy” wow really??
Mobile app reviews are worthless anyway.
This review would have had a lot more credibility if he at least disclosed his affiliation with Plex. Instead, he posed as some unbiased rando while advertising Plex Pass. This is textbook gaslighting.
If you look on Plex’s review page in the Play Store, it’s receiving overwhelming amounts of negative reviews over the new UI changes, reliability/performance problems, and how the Lifetime Plex Pass purchase is a lifetime of regrets as they watch Plex getting worse every month by enshittifying itself.
If Plex is resorting to leaving fake reviews to save face, then this company is in deeper trouble than I thought.
This is textbook gaslighting.
Well if I spent 5 minutes instead of 0.5 minutes I might be able to find an actual text book but I think APA Dictionary of Psychology: “gaslight” is a pretty good definition:
to manipulate another person into doubting their perceptions, experiences, or understanding of events.
And it provides an example, from the original source of the term:
a wife is nearly driven to insanity by the deceptions of her husband
It is tres shitty to minimize actual abusive behavior by applying a term associated with intimate partner violence it to this minor thing which is someone posting a comment on some software he works at using an account which goes to zero effort to obfuscate that.
In penance I decree you should watch the movie archive.org/details/gaslight-1944 and tell me if it’s any good, I haven’t seen it yet.
Damn skippy. Gaslighting and basic ass lying are different things. But hey, it’s trendy right now. Next, we’ll find out how he’s a malignant narcissist.
Dude posted a shill review. It’s called shilling. It’s a form of lying for profit. He likely did it to advance his career or because he was afraid not to. His employer likely encouraged the action without directly ordering it.
This is the type of pedantry that annoys me and yet I admire. Bravo, good fellow, I salute you
Its literally a false review, designed to counter the multiple negative real reviews that have been left recently. Its a false narrative designed to induce the reader into doubting the ture narrative of the other genuine reviews, or possibly even influence a potential reviewer by coloring their actual experience with the app. Definitely fits the definition you posted, even if its inconsistent with the example they gave.
Dude just could have said something like,“Hey, I’m a developer of Plex and have really enjoyed my experience using it. Let me know if you’d like to see something added/fixed.”
This would’ve been the best response. Leaving 5 star review on your company’s product + signalling transparency and good communication with costumers? One stone two birds.
I work at a brewery. Am I not allowed to tell people I like the beer I brew? I’m doing this very wrong I guess my brewery has been enshittified by me. Bummer
If you leave your brewery a public review pretending to just be another customer, yeah thats pretty shitty. You kniw what you’re doing, don’t play games.
You kniw what you’re doing
Exactly. They know what they’re doing and we shouldn’t pretend that they don’t.
Scumbags are all around us, hiding in plain sight.
Am I not allowed to tell people I like the beer I brew?
That’s not really what he’s doing though. It would be like if you pretended to be a customer and drink your own beer in front of actual customers and were like “WOW! This beer is super good! The guy who made it has a really big dick!”
It’s just shitty to do because it’s sheistery as fuck.
Plex employees totally have the right to review Plex in the store. But they should be expected to advertise that they work for Plex…
you know full well its not a matter of liking the product you’re affiliated with, but an undisclosed conflict of interest in an environment where people have a reasonable expectation of transparent, non-biased testimonials from normal end users, not shilling from paid employees.
I was going to say if he writes an app and doesn’t like it, something’s wrong there
Perhaps. Either way, he’s biased, and reviews should be unbiased.
You can tell people whatever you want and they can criticize you accordingly.
If you don’t disclose your affiliation with a company that you’re shilling, rational people will criticize you for being biased and self-serving.
If you want to avoid this completely rational, acceptable, and expected criticism, then you should reveal any conflicts of interest before or during your promotion of the business.
This shouldn’t need to be spelled out for you, but this generation has been conditioned to be proud of ignorance and defending abuse.
Are you allowed to tell people that you dislike your beer, as a representative of the brewery?
Sure, but I like it. I will say I often appreciate negative feedback though. Always trying to improve
People really abuse that new and very useful word. It diminishes the usefulness of it.
I saw someone describe rental housing as enshittified.
No honey, it’s just shitty.
It’s very nearly a synonym for value extraction. I guess specifically it refers to the consequences of value extraction on the web, but really I think Doctorow’s whole goal with that campaign was to make people aware of how awful venture capital and value extraction really are for us.
Is it fake or just a review by an employee that uses plex?
Yeah, I`m all for roasting Plex but nothing about that review is inappropriate or prima facie untruthful.
From the forum post:
Just because he works at Plex doesn’t necessarily make his review fake.
Yikes the copium here. Reviews are meant for users of the app, this is so incredibly biased and in bad taste. I have had my shittiest companies ask us to leave positive reviews on Glassdoor. The shittiest ones.
Maybe their big redesign that no one asked for isn’t doing well, and this is a self preservation thing, to get more people to download it. Maybe CEO asked them to. Maybe they’re just over eager. All are excuses and not valid reasons to give a rating on your own company’s product
While I don’t think it’s a great look, employees can be customers/users too. I can’t imagine a Plex employee wouldn’t actually use Plex either. They should have disclosed that they’re an employee in the review.
I haven’t reviewed any of the games I’m in the credits for. Mostly cause I haven’t played or owned them.
I bet someone got it in their head that slow reviews were the reason the company wasn’t meeting a goal, and they asked everyone to contribute.
The download functionality also has been broken for a while and not working for lots of users, even LTT made a video about it
I don’t count this as fake. He must certainly uses the software and the features he described are actually features under plex pass. And I no doubt believe he enjoys it. No lies here.
I think the point being made is that company staff shouldn’t be leaving five-star reviews on products they, themselves, work on. Whether they do it because they love the product, or a company suit told them to. Personally, I think it’s fine to try and convince people to use your/your company’s software, but giving yourself a five-star review to do so is downright pathetic.
They seriously enshitified the download feature. You used to be able to set it to download X number of unplayed episodes. Then it would manage downloading fresh content for you as you watched stuff. Now you have to manually download each and every episode yourself. This was literally the killer feature Plex had over Jellyfin for me.
Yeah fair enough, and I do agree. I only reused the title of the forum post where this was originally posted. Have changed the title up now.
And of course the twats locked the thread.
Sharing this post form r/selfhosted which also describes the recent plex situation lately, worth a read. Image
What do ya know, yet another day of being happy I never invested in Plex
Yet again Plex is an amazing example of how people become more angry because they give things away for free.
If everything required a Plex pass less people would be angry.
Just use want you want.
Daily reminder, Plex fails to include a libre software license text file. We do not control it, anti-libre software.
lol, did he have the AI bros in marketing write it too? If they’re gonna do this they could at least write their own bullshit…
I’m not a fan of Plex and switched to Jellyfin very early on, but I’m a bit confused by the outrage here. He used his real name to report on a UX he built. I see FOSS developers do this all the time, and it seems pretty innocuous.
I can imagine if he generated thousands of anonymous accounts and did the same it’d be very bad, but an author commenting on his own work using his full real name doesn’t seem like a conspiracy plot
Is the user from Playstore the real Rui Lebre? I mean, I can create on any platform users with real people names, but how can people know that it is the real person that is creating the comment, not just an imposter?
I fucking hate how I can’t listen to my music libraries in the main app now. I have a separate profile for other people in the house and I can’t switch profiles with plexamp.
Community Manager: After we changed the terms of our public client to force everyone to pay for what used to be a free service, our ratings have taken a hit. If we don’t get back to at least 4.0, Google won’t feature us for free advertising. Everyone, go and leave a 5-star review.
Developers: but there are mill…
Community Manager: STOP, go and review now. scoot!
Never thought I’d see the hate for plex on here get to this level.
I ditched Plex for Jellyfin a while ago and am not a fan of Plex, but this is the silliest thing to complain about. First of all, just because they work for Plex doesn’t automatically make it a fake review. Certainly wouldn’t call it an unbiased one, but that doesn’t mean the review is fake.
Jellyfin works fine. No point paying for Plex.
i mean im sure they use it too and nothing they said was anything but their personal opinion so i don’t think it’s that big a deal
This was a nice reminder to leave some bad reviews on the App Store
Never underestimate the sycophantic idiocy of individual tech workers. One developer does not make a corporate policy.
Conflict of intrest
Today i finalized my switch over to Jellyfin. I was a lifetime member but i’m tired of letting them scrape my data.
it’s a single review, who cares?
do you know for a fact that is him and not just someone using his name? either way this is fairly harmless
Counterpoint: when I worked at Panda Express, I used to leave fake reviews on our store about how helpful and professional pp_boy_ was because I wanted a raise. Never did it on any accounts attached to my name though.
Sunny@slrpnk.net 5 weeks ago
Leaving this completely unrelated link to a better alternative here: jellyfin.org
Cocodapuf@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
It’s plain deceitful to say jellyfin is simply better. It’s simply less capable and less supported. I don’t know if you’re trying to deceive others or just yourself.
Here’s the difference: With Plex it’s trivial to invite other people to watch content from your server, they can view it on just about any device they have and it doesn’t take any complicated networking setup to achieve. Likewise, just as you share your server, you can view content from other people’s servers through the same interface. This is not a small feature it’s the primary feature of Plex, it’s what sets it apart from xbmc or any media center software.
I am totally on board with OSS and I would absolutely use jellyfin in a second if it could do the things that Plex does. But it can’t.
As a side note, this new interface for Plex on mobile is absolute shit, a big step backwards. If I had my way I’d still be using the Plex app from 2016.
Auli@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
No it’s not they have to create a Plex account if putting a URL in a window is to technical then creating an account is. Also jfa-go has made inviting so easy.
MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
Jellyfin really needs to work on security and server discovery.
As it is right now you have to manually input the server URL unless it’s on the same physical network, discovery won’t even work with broadcasts across VLANs, or over the internet.
Onomatopoeia@lemmy.cafe 5 weeks ago
It doesn’t even work right on the same net sometimes.
possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 5 weeks ago
I think the better answer would be to not expose Jellyfin to the internet.
Although it would be cool if it integrated with something like p2panda or libp2p
ccunning@lemmy.world 5 weeks ago
Am I correct that there is no first party Jellyfin app for AppleTV?
mosiacmango@lemm.ee 5 weeks ago
There is not, but Infuse is what the Jellyfin project offically recommends.
stephaaaaan@feddit.org 5 weeks ago
There is Jellyfin, Swiftfin, and Infuse - the latter being 3rd party, but its my favourite so far in terms of stability :)
macstainless@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
Correct and what I’ve seen from Jellyfin / Emby are poor looking at best. While I could cobble together a system that works for me, there’s no way anyone I share with would put up with it. Plex is PLEX for a reason.
WaterSword@discuss.tchncs.de 5 weeks ago
Yes. But there is a different option. There’s a list of clients on the website.
haui_lemmy@lemmy.giftedmc.com 5 weeks ago
If you use plex and jellyfin anyway, i suggest checking raspberry pi and kodi (libre elec) as an alternative. The pi4 is fine for hd at least, some use it for 4k but i have no exp with that. It works well and helps you get off the apple ecosphere.
Lyra_Lycan@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
No but there is an Emby app for every device.
Hawk@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 weeks ago
“Better”
Maybe if they’d fix their glaring security issues
MaggiWuerze@feddit.org 5 weeks ago
Or their convoluted settings. When there’s a github project that does the HW encoding settings for you, you know it’s intuitive…
gradual@lemmings.world 5 weeks ago
hydrahd.sh
Use free streaming sites.
Anything that you want to ‘collect’ can be stored on an external hard drive and taken with you where you need to go.
Don’t overcomplicate things just to fit in with losers on the internet.