content being watched) on my device(s) and share that information with Plex’s advertising partners

That is a honey pot rights holders will be falling over themselves to pay Plex for access to once they hear about it.

Been telling anyone that would listen that they need to get out of Plex since they implemented that first iteration of trying to require you to sign into your own self hosted server with a Plex.tv account. They were telegraphing what direction they were going in with that kind of user hostile move.

Lots of responses about how it was easy to get around so no big deal (or worse that they liked it for some coping mechanism reason) and that nothing else was as easy and feature rich as Plex so it was worth it.

Well now a few years down the road from that they are now going to use that beach head on everyone’s Plex server they can to collect what is being watched and sell it to the highest bidder.

Can someone clue me in on the reason why anyone would prefer Plex instead of Jellyfin?

This is specifically related to watching their free content. You can opt out of the sale & sharing of said data, which is used to play you targeted ads when watching their free content. I am not a big fan, but this is the typical “free” TV spiel. Was there something that changed recently or is it just being recognized now?

Meanwhile, poor Jellyfin just quietly doing the job.

Can someone explain to me why you need anything more than directories filled with files to view content?

I’m struggling to understand why anybody would need or want something like Plex.

I want to watch a movie. I open explorer, go to the folder movies, select the movie, and double click the icon.

The end.

Nothing is ever truly free in this world. They gotta pay their bills too.

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.

Is Kodi still a thing? Been a while since I had a media server but I have another one in the works because fuck streaming services

Is that really the message you got? It’s worded differently than what I see in mine.

Just deleted my account.

Hey, you reading this? You should too.

OP is posting misleading hyperbole

This from the Plex site, emphasis mine.

Consent

We take your privacy seriously. If you’d like more details on how we collect, use, and transfer your information, please review our Privacy Policy. Plex is able to provide free-to-watch movies, shows, and live TV by displaying a modest number of ads before and during playback. While it is not possible to opt-out of these ads, you do not have to consent to the selling and sharing of certain information.

We’re never going to get anywhere if people on these communities can’t act in good faith and share correct and information - not sensation. Change the OP or mods delete this misinformation.

ETA: shame on the 63 people who mindlessly upvote this crap without factchecking OP too.

“enshittification wont happen to my software of choice”

hahahaha… those ppl with discord, iphones, windows,plex…they wont learn.

It’s opt-in. Zero issue here.

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 router’s public 80&443 and using DDNS to point vanity.example and *.vanity.example to my home public IP (I like to live dangerously; 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. 😅

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, can be opt-out of, and doesn’t apply to self-hosted content.