Submitted 1 month ago by Sunny@slrpnk.net to selfhosted@lemmy.world
For Plex accounts created before March 20, 2025, we require your consent to sell your personal data as described in our Privacy Policy. You can always adjust your share/sell preferences <here>.
How else can they afford to stream samurai cop 3 and other things you never asked? You guys need to support them in becoming the best corp they can be! They want to be big boys now.
Last shit they pulled I moved to Jellyfin. Today I deleted my Plex account.
Even if you can mental gymnastics into believing this won’t affect you, we know that’s the way Plex is going. How long until it does?
Force PlexPass first, get money, then change terms.
Coordinated big-brain evil.
I’m a big fan of Jellyfin. I would say it is easily family approved. That is for my family in my household who is using it on our home Wi-Fi.
But I am not about to expose it publicly. I have WireGuard set up on my immediate family’s devices and that is mostly ok (until you get on a public Wi-Fi that fails because you haven’t gone through their portal and can’t because the vpn is on, or you are on an airplane’s Wi-Fi with no internet trying to watch their movies and it doesn’t work until you turn off the vpn). Explaining this to my wife has been a nonstop battle.
I’d like it open it up to my siblings families, especially because I have the ersatztv plug-in to create approved child stations, but so many smart tvs and devices don’t support a vpn. How have others handled that situation?
Wireguard doesn’t necessarily need to have those limitations, but it will depend in part how your VPN profile is set up.
If you configured your wireguard profile to always route all traffic over the VPN then yeah, you won’t be able to access local networks. And maybe that’s what you want, in which case fine :)
But you can also set the profile to only route traffic that is destined for an address on the target network (I.e your home network) and the rest will route as normal.
This second type of routing only works properly however when there are no address conflicts between the network you are on (i.e. someone else’s WiFi) and your home network.
For this reason if you want to do this it’s best to avoid on your own home network the common ranges almost everyone uses as default, i.e. 192.168.0.* and 10.0.0.*
I reconfigured my home network to 192.168.22.* for that reason and now I never hit conflicts and VPN can stay on all the time but only traversed when needed.
I typically use split routing BUT also have dns set to my pihole, both so dns works for my internal services and for tracker blocking. That causes a big issue. Also I wish WireGuard would just handle failures better. Even when it can’t connect, it seems to break networking (at least on iOS)
What?! You really expect proprietary software to play fair? That’s adorable. Not my circus, not my clowns!
I assumed they already were.
No chance Plex wasn’t making money from those who didn’t pay for Plex Pass.
I know, right? Any ‘free’ service with that much infrastructure to support, is more than likely selling your data. I guess, it’s kind of refreshing that a company comes right out and tells you they’re about to bend you over the barrel.
hashed email xD, if someone has email it’s just hash(email) == email. given how many emails leaked producing hashes of 90% of population emails is not a problem
Assuming they’re not salted hashes.
I can imagine this data would sell for quite a bit of money. Networks love to wige about how much they lose to piracy
Damn. They’re really ripping the copper wiring out of the walls.
And then finding out it’s all fiber optics and everyone migrated to Jellyfin. :/
My aim is to get my friends and family to stop paying for streaming services and if I have to pay for Plex to achieve this then that’s a win.
Jellyfin is nowhere near as feature complete as Plex and not by a long shot. My users don’t like the UI of Jellyfin and setting up for remote access is no trivial feat. With this in mind and my goals Plex is better suited.
So far have 8 users all saving £10-40 a month not going to streaming services.
I have a lifetime Plex pass but still I am considering switching. Currently I have both Jellyfin and Plex on the same libraries but Jellyfin doesn’t have support for chromecast (on iOS and Firefox) nor support for offline . (Not) covering neither my at home nor travelling use cases 😕
Can you clarify what you mean by Chromecast support? I have a Chromecast device and it has the jellyfin app on it. Works like a charm without issues. I have a feeling you mean something else though?
He’s probably referring to just Chromecast without the Google TV module. Jellyfin works great for me as well on the Chromecast w/GTV
I think you can use Infuse on iOS to chromecast. I’m not sure if that’s behind the subscription though.
For chromecast to work with the app, you need to install the jellyfin app from google play, not fdroid or other store.
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
I would simply click I Do Not Agree and then throw the computer in the trash
I just got no, and everything still works fine afaik
Perhaps. The issue I perceive is that, for corporations, evil deeds are only illegal if you get caught and the government actually pursues you. Then, the most the corpos face is a fine, and remember: if the penalty for doing something illegal is a flat fine, then it isn’t a punishment, it’s a price.
Thus, this corporation has indicated its clear intent to sell me to the highest bidder. I would not give them a chance to do so. A “do not agree” button is just that: a “do not agree button”.
Plex has always been trash imo. Far better open source options available.
So expected. Now anyone who’s able to support the non exploitative alternatives like Jellyfin please do. It’s how you keep the good things going.
I’m not even against Jellyfin or anything, but as long as I have to build elaborate VPN solutions to continue sharing my content I’ll stick with Plex. Not even starting with the availability of clients on different platforms and the general lack of polish in Jellyfin first party UI (player and config).
I could live with most of that stuff if there was a way to share my library without becoming tech support for half my friends circle
Your reply just raised so many questions but most importantly why would you need a VPN with Jellyfin? I mean it’s just server like any other which means install, add certificates or reverse proxy with certificates and if you’re behind NAT you would need to setup port forwarding.
I mean if you’re worried about server being exploited if not updated then opening it to the internet wouldn’t be good but isn’t that the case with Plex already?
Emby is a good option if you don’t want to hop to jellyfin. I have been pleased with it so far. I found the media tag/idenifier to work better/quicker than plex’s.
I feel like I know the answer but what happens if you click “I do not agree”?
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.
Just deleted my account.
Hey, you reading this? You should too.
I would probably still want to use Plex due to its superior interface, despite this shit they are pulling. But Plex on my TV is so UNBELIEVABLY slow. I have a large library, like almost 14 TB and still growing. But there’s no reason it should take almost a minute (or more than?) for the first content to show after starting the app.
Jellyfin with the same library takes mere seconds before I see the first movie/episode poster cards. It’s inexcusable how poorly optimized Plex is.
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.
Unfortunately, that is just the system your TV runs on being slow. If you use a dedicated streaming device, you will have much better results.
Jellyfin with the same library takes mere seconds before I see the first movie/episode poster cards.
How do you explain this? Every other app is very quick to load on the TV… Plex is the only issue.
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.
Hello Jellyfin.
Damn it damn it damn it!! I can’t use Jellyfin because…its what I watch all my porn on. Plex was used for all the family stuff. Mother fuckers! Greed is a bitch.
lmao.
Yes! How can I use this with my seedbox? Just FTP to my computer and use the stashapp from there?
You can hide libraries on jellyfin.
Just create a family user and a porn user and login how you please.
Or…If feeling a little bit paranoid, run a second copy of Jellyfin. That’s what I do. Works well for me.
Sweet Jesus thank you!
It specifically mentions email addresses (used for account creation I assume) and what content is being watched, which a VPN wouldn’t do anything for.
What if its all tied to a seedbox, would that matter?
This is basically my exact situation lol
Docker and tailscale you can run multiple instances
While selling data in general is shitty, I want to push back on the fear mongering a little bit.
This only applies to new accounts, and doesn’t apply to self-hosted content.
“We have changed the terms. Pray that we don’t change them further.”
Yet.
…for now.
Got rid of Plex a long time ago. Trash ass program
Goddammit… Right after I got the lifetime pass…
It literally gives you a gigantic “hey we want to sell your data. Do you want to allow that” prompt when you open it. They didn’t even make the “no, don’t sell my data” button grey and tiny like so many cookie prompts do. Plex went out of their way to put it up front and center, instead of quietly burying it in an obscure opt-out. There are plenty of perfectly valid complaints about Plex… But if a company wants to sell my data, (and here’s a spoiler warning: They all want to) this is how it should be handled.
Interesting. I’ll have to look for that. I don’t believe I’ve actually seen the prompt yet.
It’s opt-in. Zero issue here.
Because Plex would never dare to turn this on by default for everyone…?
It’s also not for your personal media, only what you watch of their hosted content. They aren’t selling that your most watched thing is your highly curated big booty whores collection.
Frogs do enjoy a good sauna. 😊
If that’s your line, then more power to you. I’m happy to live in a world where people make choices I don’t agree with - but I will always respect those who make an informed choice over people who let fate or advertising make their choices for them.
However, I also wouldn’t blame others for looking for an exit. Or testing other waters. Or at least thinking the grass might be greener elsewhere.
If you do continue to use Plex, consider taking a weekend for a hobbyist project such as a VPN server (OpenVPN or Wireguard are classics and broadly indistinguishable from work traffic) or a reverse proxy web server (nginx proxy manager is a good place to start). Not only are these useful and fun‡, but they defang one of Plex’s most marketable features - the automatic NAT traversal.
‡I put 3 VPNs on all my phones - a split tunnel to home; a full tunnel to home; and a commercial VPN with international egress points. The split tunnel lets my phone access my home services from any network it’s connected to (without impeding traffic destined elsewhere; the other ones are for coffee shop use). I can also give out access to the split tunnel to trusted friends to access my guest network. Also have a site-to site with a friend for off-site backup (with an encrypted tarball of my configs); for the reverse proxy, I enjoy stapling it to my routers public 80&443 and using DDNS to point vanity.example and *.vanity.example (cloudflare tunnel & pangolin exist, too). Inside my home I have *.internal.vanity.example and *.home.vanity.example for the management webUIs and intranet versions of services so that they can be accessed via https with a secure lock.
Having your own tools to build your own cloud - on a raspberry pi, or an old spare laptop or retired desktop, or a second-hand mini PC is worth the hassle, particularly if you are using Plex baked into an Nvidia shield or other proprietary product, can offer options - and it never hurts to have options.
… But at this point I’m well and good into preaching to the choir.
Tl;dr: No hate to Plex users, but maybe have a plan. 😅
The more services you have depending on a 3rd party which can do whatever the fuck they want, either directly or by changing the rules when the feel like it (i.e. not bound by rules they cannot change, such as root DNS providers are) and then doing it, the less your system is actually self-hosted, IMHO.
For me the whole point of self-hosting is exactly being as independent as possible of 3rd parties that can just fuck you up, be it on purpose (generally for $$$) or because they go bankrupt and close their services.
This is why I’ve actually chose to run Kodi on my home server that doubles down as TV Box even though I can’t easilly use it from anywhere else (it’s possible but it involves using a standalone database that is then shared, which can only be safelly down with custom ssh pipes) rather than something like Plex.
It’s kinda funny to see people into self-hosting still doing the kind of mistake I did almost 3 decades ago (fortunatelly in a professional environment) of trusting a 3rd party to the point of becoming dependent on them and later getting burned when they abused that trust, and which led me to avoid such situations like the plague ever since.
Mind you, I can understand if people for whom self-hosting is not driven by a desire to reduce vulnerability to the whims of 3rd parties (which includes reducing the risk of enshittification) and is instead driven by “waste not” (for example, bringing new life to old hardware rather than throwing it out) or by it being a fun challenge, don’t really care to be as independent as possible from such 3rd parties.
Yes this is the concent form I get.
minoscopede@lemmy.world 1 month ago
python -m http.server is still my media server of choice. It’s never let me down.
atticus88th@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Mine too! I’m enjoying your media server right now.
/s
fin@sh.itjust.works 1 month ago
I bet you’d like filebrowser. Cleaner interface while being minimal as http.server
minoscopede@lemmy.world 1 month ago
Beautiful! I’ll definitely give this a go