As you may have seen Plex decided it was OK today to send an email showing me what my friends have been watching. To be clear, this is Plex telling other people what I’ve been watching from my server, with my files, and this is not OK.
We all knew it was a matter of time before Plex started collecting data on our libraries and sharing it with advertisers. What happened to their “we don’t know, and don’t want to know, what is on your server”?. This, for me, is proof that those fears were absolutely founded in reality. On what planet would I ever want this information to be shared with friends on family on an OPT OUT basis?
It’s totally unacceptable to collect this data in the first place. It’s totally unacceptable to share this information with uniquely identifiable information. And it’s totally unacceptable to do this without explicitly asking me if it’s OK.
Unfortunately there is nothing you can do about this as a server admin, because technically these are Plex users and their marketing email preferences are controlled on the user side in the Plex website preferences. Not on your server.
This is an absolutely egregious overreach.
Thank goodness there are alternatives available in the form of Jellyfin and Emby. I left my Plex server up after the Jellyfin January challenge we did on the Self-Hosted podcast but because of this I feel that I have no choice but to take it down for good.
Thanks for the heads up, not a fan. I’ve been running it concurrently with Jellyfish but looks like it may be time to ditch it.
That’s why I just can’t trust proprietary software anymore. Some of it is unavoidable though without making things unnecessarily hard/worse for yourself.
Shit like this gets pulled all the time, most of it is probably never discovered because it’s all hidden somewhere deep in their executables/firmware/binary blobs or whatever shit they push onto you…
so what’s the option now? jellyfin?
Just use Plex offline and you are good to go. If you don’t know how to use Plex offline read up about reverse proxies like Nginx and how you can allow access to download meta data but block basically all the rest and even fake that Plex thinks its online.
I guess you could do that…or you could switch to a company that hasn’t gone to $hit like Jellyfin or Emby.
I hope jellyfin comes fully to samsung tvs soon since the only thing stopping me from moving to jellyfin is my dad uses a samsung tv and I live to far away to go sideload it for him
This is why I use Kodi. Nothing leaves my home network, and I directly control all data myself
Well, one of the reasons I use Kodi at least
Don’t forget every email provider who accepted the email (and all three letter agencies who monitor unencrypted email) also have that info now as well.
Dude, I have been telling y’all Plex is going down fast. Just set up emby or jellyfin and be happy knowing your setup isn’t profiting off of you
I was just about to buy Plex Lifetime on Black Friday, looks like that isn’t going to happen now
I think you only got this because you are the server owner, which you already have access to all that info.
I have never used Plex, never interested to self-host it, never read about its history, didn’t understand its pricing, didn’t understand its self-hosting vs paid thingy.
And I will keep it that way !!
But, One thing that I do understand is that there are Venture Capitalists who are running the show now. One thing for sure about VCs is that they don’t care about products or services, they only care about financial returns.
Now they are just generating the buzz in the community. It’s just that they are waiting for the right time to screw everyone. Because the VCs will want their investment’s returns.
So, thank you to Plex for existing, but NO THANKS !!
Jellyfin all the way!
