TeddE

They don’t own it, the individual posters own the content of their own posts, however, from the reddit terms of service:

When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit.

And with each of those rights granted, Reddit’s lawyers can defend those rights. So no, they don’t own it “just because they ran the servers” - they own specific rights to copy granted to them by each poster.

(I don’t like this arrangement, but ignorance of the terms of service isn’t going to help someone who uploaded a full copy of the works they have extensive rights to) On this subject I think there needs to be an extensive overhaul to narrow what terms you can extend to the general public. The problem is I straight up don’t trust anyone currently in power to make such a change to have our interests in mind.

It would be inviting a lawsuit for sure. I like the essence of the idea, but it’s probably more trouble than it’s worth for all but the most fanatic.

You can also setup Jellyfin in parallel to Plex and give it a whirl.

Usually. When Plex leaked that they were selling user data, I was running Plex server on an Nvidia Shield, a unique build of Plex that ran as a core service of the Android device. There ain’t no Jellyfin analogue of that monstrosity.

To be fair - this mindset is hardly exclusive to self-hosters. The dotcom era itself kicked off because it was easier to get advertisers to pay for server costs than users.

AI: taking another hit of acid in preparation to research the reason why the last thing it did after taking acid didn’t work out.

Fair point. I think my eyes glossed over the part where they said they where taking a second look at docker (but caught the rest about rebuilding the OS in general). My sincere apologies 😓😅

Not gonna argue that Jellyfin is technically superior, but I switched to Plex to stop others from giving/selling my viewing habits. Stopped using Plex when it leaked they were doing the same.

I used Plex for privacy reasons. I stopped using Plex for privacy reasons.

They can but - if their current setup meets their needs - why? There ain’t nothing wrong with having a few simple spare laptops, each an isolated environment for a few simple home server tasks each.

Don’t get me wrong - I too advocate for docker, particularly on new builds, or as a relatively turnkey solution to get started for novice friends, but the best setup is the one that works, and they sound like they got theirs where they want it.

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. 😅

newrepublic.com/…/microsoft-three-mile-island-ai-…

Nope. Very real.