1w ago

Plex now want to SELL your personal data

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/

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OK, so why can I mess up a config so that the whole thing grinds to a halt?
Plus, I'm not so sure. A bunch of the people I saw mentioning the same thing did so on bug reports that seemed unattended. It's not like I had a byzantine deployment, all the thing was doing was parse library files held in a given location. I installed the software, pointed it to a location and all I ever touched afterwards were the files on the library folders.
I will opt out of a LOT of things on Plex before I troubleshoot that situation, I can tell you that.
- so why can I mess up a config so that the whole thing grinds to a halt?
  I actually can't tell if this is facetious or serious. There are a couple hundred (if not thousand) configuration options or reasons why your chosen setup might have caused the problem you're describing - it isn't really up to the developer to anticipate how every individual user has configured their home server, with every other application that might be sharing the same environment. It might have even been the plex service that was causing the issue.
  I ran jellyfin and plex on the same library and machine for probably a year before migrating completely away from plex without any issues, but that doesn't mean I didn't have to read a bit of the documentation to get the config right.
  I will opt out of a LOT of things on Plex before I troubleshoot that situation, I can tell you that.
  Fair enough, managing your own home server isn't for everyone.
  
  it isn't really up to the developer to anticipate how every individual user has configured their home server,
  Yes, it is.
  People keep answering the question of "why would anybody still use Plex" in this thread much better than I ever could.
  Also, "it works on my machine" doesn't mean it's not a bug or a legitimate performance issue inherent to the software. It's always crazy to me how holier-than-thou, not-the-developer's-job people can get without heeding even the most basic, ground-level software development principles.
  Also, also, spare me the condescension, I self-host a dozen different things, including other open source libraries for non-video stuff, closed source libraries for other other non-video stuff and increasingly more-trouble-than-it's-worth networking.
  But even if I didn't, Plex was one of the first things I hosted because all you have to do is installing like you would any local application and it just works. By the time it's living in a container inside a dedicated home server or whatever you are well past the entry level for this stuff. If that's the gap you find acceptable between Plex and Jellyfin you have, again, found your answer to why a whole bunch of people would consider one and not the other.
  I just don't think you need to make your whole personality about your pet home server or that it needs to be finicky and annoying to work. Self hosting has tons of potential and it's one of the few areas where open source solutions dominate the field. Somebody should take some time to make it actually accessible before the commercial hounds smell blood in the enshittified waters and turn it into a product all the way.
  Kudos to Home Assistant for soooort of doing that, although I still think it's a bit overcustomizable and overengineered. Still the closest to a good self-hosted open application out there by a mile, though.
  
  Also, “it works on my machine” doesn’t mean it’s not a bug or a legitimate performance issue inherent to the software
  Of course not, but when there's an issue that's limited to certain users, the immediate question is "what is different about this installation that's causing this issue here and not elsewhere?". It would have been just as easy for you to start with Jellyfin instead of plex, but then you would have likely run into the same issue when trying to add plex to the same shared media volume. That isn't an uncommon issue, but when you've already said 'it's not worth my time to troubleshoot this application', I can only assume you also didn't have the time to read the documentation. That's fine - most of us here understand that homelabs are a niche hobby interest and not everyone is willing to maintain a server that requires technical knowledge and time to keep running smoothly. Some people just want something that works out of the box and don't care about it being open sourced or customizable, and that's fair. If that's why you prefer plex that's fine. But it isn't the developer's fault if you choose to go down a more complicated deployment path and find that you're out of your depth.
  It’s always crazy to me how holier-than-thou, not-the-developer’s-job people can get without heeding even the most basic, ground-level software development principles.
  Containerized applications are simply not designed to work like native applications - they are very much built with the assumption that those people who are deploying them have - at a minimum - a cursory knowledge of VM's and shared volume ACL's and a willingness to troubleshoot their configuration if there are conflicts. It isn't because they're shirking responsibility as developers, it's because they're providing source code that's designed for remote service developers to plug into other services/environments and customized. If you can't be bothered to do basic troubleshooting that's very common with shared volume deployments, then maybe you've reached your personal threshold for how much self-hosting you're willing to do. Again, that's not 'holier-than-thou', that's just an acknowledgment of what remote application deployment requires.
  Plex and jellyfin can be run together if you really wanted to do it, but if you can't be bothered to do basic troubleshooting then I won't be bothered to soothe your ego.
  I just don’t think you need to make your whole personality about your pet home server or that it needs to be finicky and annoying to work
  Lmao, idk what to tell you bud. Some people actually enjoy working on their cars, but I don't hear you getting mad at them because all you're willing to do yourself is change your oil.
  
  You are actually wrong about that first assumption, I did try both at the same time and the problems with Jellyfin moved me over to Plex. Plex never had an issue handling my remote library at any point, and in fact ran just as well in a container in the NAS holding the files as it did natively on both Windows and Linux, so it was surprisingly easy to see what combination of placing files and software worked better for me.
  Which I guess is a good segue to your second point, because hey, turns out there are plenty of applications that are pretty agnostic about running inside of a container or not, Plex included. And there are several implementations of easy self-hosted apps that will set up a container for you. Unfortunately most of those are commercial software trying to monetize self-hosting, and snobbish hobbyists seem to have no particular urgency for beating corporations to that particular punch.
  And yes, you can run Plex and Jellyfin together. I don't know what that point is supposed to add to this. You can mostly run any software alongisde any other software. Frankly, the biggest issue of doing that, besides how redundant it is, is that Jellyfin will insist on writing a whole bunch of garbage all over your library if you want to set it up its way. Plex will mostly tolerate this and keep chugging along, though, so it's not a dealbreaker if you don't mind.
  And absolutely you can make a hobby out of self-hosting or whatever else, but the point is car nuts typically don't hold the opinion that nobody should be having cars but them. I mean, there's plenty of car snobbery, and a bunch of people will say they prefer a manual transmission car over an automatic, but it's a pretty extreme position to hear someone say if you can't drive stick you shouldn't have access to cars. Let alone say that if you didn't build your car yourself you aren't skilled enough to have one, which is the actual equivalence here.
  
  You are actually wrong about that first assumption, I did try both at the same time and the problems with Jellyfin moved me over to Plex.
  I inferred it from this:
  Plex was one of the first things I hosted because all you have to do is installing like you would any local application and it just works
  And anyway, plex and jellyfin have different media library configuration requirements. Even if you did them at the same time, you'd have to be kind of lucky to have configured them both on the same media volume correctly without reading any of the documentation or having experience with docker ACL rules.
  Just as a for-instance (since I don't see any specifics), sharing a media volume across separated docker containers on linux requires mapping the same users and usergroups to each container. It's assumed you should know this, if you're deploying a stack of services on a server, because containers are designed to be isolated and secure - containers are restricted to accessing files in their approved ACL, so that a bad actor can't get access to a separate volume from a compromised service. One possible problem you were having (again, just a guess) is that jellyfin was assigning itself ownership of the files/folders on the media volume every time it did its scan, and Plex no longer had permission to access them. It actually doesn't matter which service was there first - as soon as you had two services accessing the same volume you would have run into this issue. It depends on how you configured both services, and if you gave them privileged access or mapped users properly, ect.
  and in fact ran just as well in a container in the NAS holding the files as it did natively on both Windows and Linux
  If you're running both services on a store-bought NAS, the problem could have also been a misunderstanding about the combined overhead requirement for the services. Without making any assumptions about how much thought you put into your configuration, I'd check that as a part of troubleshooting. But, again, seems like you don't give a fuck about troubleshooting your customized service stack and would rather use a ready-made product. That's fine.
  turns out there are plenty of applications that are pretty agnostic about running inside of a container or not, Plex included.
  Jellyfin included also. I'm not sure what the point you're making though.
  Frankly, the biggest issue of doing that, besides how redundant it is, is that Jellyfin will insist on writing a whole bunch of garbage all over your library if you want to set it up its way.
  I agree it's redundant, which is why I personally only deploy jellyfin now. As far as jellyfin writing to your media drive...... Yea, I guess that is a difference between the services. This isn't really a problem if you configure your containers correctly, but if you don't want to mess with that stuff I can see why it might be an issue for you. Plex may be storing those files on its container volume instead of the mounted media volume, or it could be storing them on their remote server (it's been a while since I had plex running), which is a fine way to do it too. There are advantages to writing it to the media volume, but I won't bore you with that
  Let alone say that if you didn’t build your car yourself you aren’t skilled enough to have one, which is the actually equivalence here.
  Good thing nobody is telling you not to have a homelab or use selfhosted services. If you want to use Plex and only want to drive automatic transmissions, go for it. Doesn't change my preference or enthusiasm for jellyfin or manual transmissions, though. And given the opportunity, i'll still passionately debate the advantages to learning stickshift and open-sourced and customizable self-hosted applications. And if you give them a try and run into problems, i'll gladly help you try to solve them if you're willing to engage with it - but if you'd rather just complain about how much my preference sucks then i'll have no problem telling you to stick with what you know next time.
  
  Man, you're really itching to talk shop about specifics and complexities and it really isn't about that.
  The guy said "why does anybody still consider Plex" about the slightly misleading privacy policy excerpt and a bunch of us pointed out UX and accessibility are reasons. This entire tangent spawns from me claiming I had technical issues on top of the UX stuff and you being super excited to assume it's a skill issue and maybe get to troubleshoot a bit.
  Except it wasn't, I'm not particularly interested and the technical issues weren't even the primary reason I moved to something else.
  For what it's worth, I barely remember what the setup was when I messed around with Jellyfin because I move things around a bunch and despite this conversation suddenly hinging on it, I didn't think much of it beyond "oh, this sucks, I guess I'll just do Plex instead". It was almost certainly not Plex and Jellyfin running simultaneously on two containers sharing resources, though. I have way too many loose computers bouncing around the house for this not to have been some test run natively installing it on whatever I had lying around, which is also why the Plex server I have now has been on three different machines since then (and is still running natively because why the hell not, being adamant that everything needs to be on some overdone docker setup is just nerds being nerds).
  Look, I respect your hobbies, but I reserve the right to find you extremely annoying when you try to patronize people who are actually trying to get shit done just because you're excited at the opportunity to exlpain the difference between a bind and a volume at someone whether they need the explanation or not. The reality of it is if you want to be nerdy and all hobbyist about having a home server (I fully reject the term "lab") that rabbit hole goes deep. You have tons of runway to go nuts about dedicated server hardware and networking software while letting people who just kinda want to be able to open their media without having to plug in a physical drive do their thing.
  Jellyfin doesn't HAVE to be complicated. It's not good that it is. All this tier of software that does useful stuff to replace corporate subscription crap doesn't need to be any harder to use and maintain than your average Windows application. Everybody would benefit from a concerted effort to take the faff out of it. And I pinky promise that you'll still have a lifelong hobby if and when that happens.
  
  You're free to find me annoying, I wouldn't try to deny that anyway.
  You pointed to a 'technical issue', and i've been pretty upfront about why that isn't necessarily a problem with the software and more likely a user error. You're free to not use jellyfin for whatever reason you want but I don't think it's accurate to portray that as an issue with the software. Sorry if you disagree.
  I haven't seen any issues with UX design personally, and honestly I haven't seen anyone making a detailed case here about it, but if all you need is "to be able to open your media without having to plug in a physical drive do your thing" I don't see anything wrong with jellyfin. Maybe if you really really like your google SSO and can't figure out how to implement that yourself, great. Use plex, go nuts.
  
  I'm very confused about why you'd assume user error is more likely, given the setup.
  But to your other question, if it WAS user error, then it's Jellyfin's fault. Why should it be possible for the user to erroneously set the software so that scanning a library would grind the whole thing to a halt? I mean, it wasn't user error, but in what world is allowing the user to set up a simple library scrape in a way that breaks the functionality of the entire thing an acceptable implementation? A bug I can understand, but that's just bad.
  Also just bad, from my recollection, Jellyfin's interface to add live TV channels, its overcustomizable tools for skinning (which are needed because the base skin is pretty plain), the convoluted requirements for remote access, the overly strict library parsing paired with the default choice being to keep data stored within the library (for portability, I suppose? It's ugly and annoying and messy). I briefly tried to get books working on it before giving up and that also sucked, but it was a while ago and I forget the details.
  You can get as condescending as you want, but those are all major UX blockers for key use cases. Google's SSO is the least of it, but I guess it's an easy deflection if you don't want to acknowledge any usability gaps at all despite all evidence.
  And don't get me wrong, I get that Jellyfin is free software and Plex will charge you and advertisers at any opportunity because it is not. But ultimately I use the software that works. I may prefer a free alternative, because who doesn't, but that's not a get out of jail free card. Particularly when the choice isn't just for myself.
  
  Why should it be possible for the user to erroneously set the software so that scanning a library would grind the whole thing to a halt?
  You've been extremely vague about what the actual issue was, and the details you HAVE given are often contradictory. I'm getting so tired of this cat and mouse game. Fine, yea. Maybe they should have anticipated your specific use case, and everyone else just got lucky with their config not causing the issue you're so sure is their fault.
  Jellyfin’s interface to add live TV channels
  It isn't designed for that but nice of them to enable you to do it anyway
  its overcustomizable tools for skinning (which are needed because the base skin is pretty plain)
  This is an outdated complaint, but also fuck them for giving you the option to customize the look, I guess?
  the convoluted requirements for remote access
  That's just what remote hosting entails, bud. Nice of plex to hand hold you through the process but it comes at the cost of privacy. It's easy enough to access via VPN though, or I guess you can expose your home network but doing that without knowing what you're doing puts you and all your data at risk. Idk how you're accessing any of your other services though.
  the overly strict library parsing paired with the default choice being to keep data stored within the library
  I have no idea what this means but I suspect it's an outdated gripe. Setting up library scans is as straightforward as plex, or at least it is now.
  I briefly tried to get books working on it
  It's not designed for that but good of them to make it so you could do that anyway
  You can get as condescending as you want, but those are all major UX blockers for key use cases
  Lmao, what?! Weren't you just telling me some people just want something that lets them stream their media to their tv without a hard drive plugged in? And now using it for ebooks is a 'basic UX block'? GTFO lmao
  
  I've been vague about the details because you are digging your heels into an argument about a one week test run I did a while ago on a piece of software that didn't do what I wanted. "My use case" was "go in there and scrape my video library" on a default install.
  The reason I even tried to plug in live IPTV, by the way, is that people made a big deal of Plex's obsession pushing for it, since they plug it in by default and have their own default list of channels pre-baked. Even if I don't use it much on Plex, and I really don't, it was an interesting test case for how the two pieces of software handle their extra options. For all the crap Plex got for trying to become Netflix, and I do agree it's a fool's errand, it was a depressing reminder of how commercial software and OSS often handle UX differently.
  Oh, and if the implication is that Jellyfin got itself a better default skin, then good for them, but I saw the interface not that long ago and it still looked pretty grim. And yeah, screw them for letting me customize it. That's bad. Entirely reskinning software is a bad feature that adds next to nothing but complexity if you have good designers make a good UI in the first place. It's fine to have as an extra, but it should either be very well packaged or waaaay out of the way for power users. The average user shouldn't have to think about it. Turning on dark mode, maybe, and even that would be a disappointing omission of a "take system setting" option as a default. UX IS important.
  And no, I refuse to concede that self-hosting entails annoying, convoluted setups. There are multiple commercial solutions to this that are different degrees of "better than nothing". At ground level plenty of routers or self-hosted products will one-click set up a VPN for you, which is not great but at least works around the issue. On the other end it's a remote service provider managing your remote access and then yeah, there's data form you leaking elsewhere, but that as an option is at least useful. It's not just pure corpo closed source like Plex, either. Home Assistant's for-profit arm will gladly take your subscription money and handle remote access for you. Whether you trust them more or less than Google (or not at all and want to set up yourself) is up to you.
  Also, again, I checked this a while ago, but given how many other people are up and down this thread claiming (and not being disputed) that Jellyfin is still less fire-and-forget for parsing, I don't know how "outdated" that is. You should ping the two separate people who recommended third party software to scrub media libraries so they'd work with Kodi/Jellyfin and explain to them that this is now entirely unnecessary.
  And I didn't say that ebooks were "a basic UX block" (although it sucking did make me go for a Plex/Komga setup, not a Plex/Jellyfin setup, so... I guess it is on that front). I gave you a list. I'm not going back to Jellyfin just to verify that you're obviously wrong about it all having been perfectly fixed up to Plex's standards, because I'm pretty sure the bunch of people saying the opposite all over this thread aren't making it up.
  UX matters. Jellyfin's UX is much, much worse than Plex's. I wish it wasn't, but it was bad enough when I tried it to push me away and a whole bunch of people here are claiming the same thing. Being delusional about the quality of the implementation doesn't make it better.

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