Plex starts narcing on its own users' anime and X-rated habits with an opt-out service, and it's going terribly

This is simply a rehash/summary of an original article on 404media. Beyond that, you would have to be living under a rock to think that Plex was interested in what their users actually wanted. I ran a Plex server for years until I got fed up with trying to turn off some new self serving misfeature with every new update. It's been clear for years that offering a self hosting media server solution is simply a bridgehead for Plex to seek every more revenue opportunities, even for paying ~~victims~~ customers. I moved to and recommend Jellyfin- comparable user experience (minus the crap), use the same library, apps for all your devices, open source and completely self contained.

Smells like windows, Facebook, Google, ...
Good starters but today will just crush you to earn that Q3 +3%
I don't even have anything like Plex, but because of you I'll check out lemmyfin, I mean jellyfin.
Problem is jellyfin doesn’t have apps on stuff, therefore my family can’t reach the content on their TVs without side loading and that’s so far beyond any of them it isn’t even funny
- What devices are missing support in your case? Not an exhaustive list of clients
- Can cast fairly well from the phone app or even the browser. Chrome cast is funky though.
- Enabling internet access is also a huge pain unless you're willing to raw dog the entire internet.
- Also even common stuff like Chromecast-ing will randomly break on Jellyfin and nobody can explain why.
- What "stuff" are you referring to? Has the webapp, Android, iOS, Firesticks, Roku. What are you trying to run it on? Even my SmartTV has it in thier native store.
- Which TV models?
- I'm gonna guess plugging in a roku is too much for them, too? When Arthur C Clarke said his magic quote I didn't expect that line to be drawn at shiny lights on a screen for most people.
I don't think the anime titles are bothering as many people as the unintentional exposure of their pornography.
- I do too much curating to have my lists leaked. If you want access to my excellent tastes, I require payment in advance.
Does Jellyfin support skip-intro and skip-credits?
- Skip-intro is an unofficial plugin ATM but can vouch that it works decently well. Can't compare it to the Plex implementation since it has been quite a while since I've had Plex deployed.
- You can load your existing plex library into Jellyfin
  Closest I could find to a non-reddit link
  https://forum.jellyfin.org/t-solved-first-time-setup-slow-scanning-screen-load-times
- Your own.

Love how the headline equates the shame of viewing porn with the shame of viewing anime

It's called hentai, and it's art.
Like the old joke goes, "when I'm watching anime and my mom walks in, I alt tab to porn because it's easier to explain"
They're subtly trying to hint that it's that kind of anime porn.

Jellyfin is going to explode in popularity (it kind of has already)

- Same. The need for an account meant I never gave Plex a second glance.
I'd love it if it had native apps on popular devices, especially on samsung TV. There are ways to set it up, but it has issues
I would love to switch to jellyfin but I can't get the fuckin thing to work. Same with Emby. Absolutely refuses to find the server.
- You install it then go to http://IP:8096. That doesn't work?
Yeah I've been running Jellyfin for a year now and it's amazing. The plugins automatically find metadata, cover art, and subtitles for me as soon as I upload them to my nas.

- I'm one of the programmers of the Jellyfin Roku client. What are some of the things you're seeing that need polish? We're always looking for what to work on next to make it better for users.
Doesn't Plex require you to buy their premium service in order to use it on mobile devices?
I remember setting up my Plex server and was shocked that I had to pay to view my own media.
- devs have to eat too, open source software (when fully free) is sometimes built as a hobby like Jellyfin, or as a portfolio project, or worst case scenario as a bait and switch to paid (sometimes it's death sentence). Then there are sponsored projects like Vulkan, or others that live off of donations like Mozilla.
- I always see this but I used Plex on my iPhone for months before I bought the Plex pass. I did buy the Plex app way back when and maybe that’s why but I’m also using a new Plex account so I don’t see how’d they be tied together.
- I use VLC for mobile to access my Plex server.

I've been seeing this story do the rounds and I feel like we're burying the lede here.

Who the hell is watching porn over Plex? That is somehow simultaneously the most uninformed and the most complicated way to access porn.

The original article mentioned "softcore" porn, like old school cinemax movies where it's porn, but thinly veiled into an actual movie.
Not like hardcore 10 minute porn movies, just semi-skeevy smut that you'd rather not have other people know you're watching. (50 shades?)
- yeah it’s only that because for the discover stuff plex has to find it on IMDB
It doesn't seem like a huge stretch. If somebody had a stored collection, and didn't share the server with anybody, why not point Plex at that folder? There's even an *arr for it, so it fits right into the usual stack.
- Adultarr?
People who haven't yet discovered StashBox.
Thank you! This is what I was wondering too!

I'll admit this feature should have definitely been opt-in. But when the update came out there was a big pop-up on your screen when you logged in. Where you just turned all of this off and hit save. It is super easy to disable.

The sharing what I watch with friends part is dumb. But it is pretty cool how you can recommend stuff to friends.

I got the pop up. I disabled it. But I just got an email from Plex telling me everything my family member watched in the last week. This is complete shit!!
- You opted out, but they didn't
- I'm not following.
What popup? I never got one.
I followed the instructions and opted out yet I'm still seeing what my users watched along with getting emails listing the same. I'm certain none of my users are interested in this and likely skipped through the pop-up without reading/comprehending it.
- I think that as the server owner it's a given that you'll be able to see what people watch.
Yeah, considering how in-your-face this popup was, I can't really take someone seriously when they just say that it was "opt-out"...
Like, I get it on a technicality. But c'mon.
- I didn’t get any popup, many others haven’t either.

If you're using Plex for porn and also adding friends on it, what were you thinking in the first place? Like, it was so obvious something like this was going to happen, and that's besides the already existant risk of accidentally sharing the wrong library with your friend.

It's a cool feature, it obviously would have been better if it filtered by age rating or adult film by default to begin with but I really see this as an overreaction.

Stash is far better for xxx than Plex anyway. It was made for it.
- Can I use the porn Stash if I don't have a porn stache?
- Stash? Asking for a friend.
Ah sure, blame the victim.
i dont download porn (anymore) but if I did use a plex server for it I would absolutely partition it off from other users on my server

Stopped using Plex long ago but who thought this was a good idea?!

Someone in their marketing department

This is far from the first horrible thing I've heard Plex do. Why are they like this?

Enshittification is the norm for all for profit endeavours. Exceptions to this are exceedingly rare and usually just a matter of time rather than truly being an exception.
It's the latest exciting chapter of "Plex and the Quest for Investibility!"
They've raised over $80 million. Investor money is a poison, and the only antidote is enshittification.
- Well thats just short sighted. Theres barely a reason for the average consumer to even think about plex let alone sell em on anything. Maybe if they tried to resurrect DVD sales or become the bandcamp of movies they would have a plan. But just a media organizer? Theres no way those investors are getting that 80mil back.

The great enshittening of internet platforms continues

So how exactly is this enshitiffication?
It's a stupid feature that's for sure, but you've gotta stop calling everything enshitiffication mate
- ?
  It's a degradation in functionality masquerading as an improvement. And as for labelling everything 'shit', have you seen my comment history. This is the first time I have used this term on any platform. Smh

Wow, glad I switched to Jellyfin.

I opted out of plex as soon as it asked me to create an online account.

You don't need that for Jellyfin.

Jellyfin ftw

I’m a little shocked at how difficult it seems to be to find instructions on how to disable this feature. Pretty sure I got it, but it wasn’t a feature called discover together but a series of sharing options.

The fact that you're only "pretty sure" and not "entirely sure" is pretty shitty on plex in itself.
- Yep. I’m not thrilled.

Would love to just pay someone to access their jellyfin server. Does something like this exist?

Not a ton of activity bdut check out https://lemmy.world/c/mediashare
- Hi there! Looks like you linked to a Lemmy community using a URL instead of its name, which doesn't work well for people on different instances. Try fixing it like this: !mediashare@lemmy.world
Yes. Youll have to find one that works for your region though (local servers will have better latency and b/w)
- Is there a place to browse options? A lemmy community you recommend perhaps?
And how to give access without setting yourself up to have the FBI raid your house or get sued to oblivion

Everytime I hear something about Plex I become a bit happier with my choice for Emby as media server.

At the time of building my then server I could choice between them(jellyfin wasn't a thing yet). Luckily I picked emby

I picked Plex mainly because the lifetime sub wasn't bad, and the features and polished interface were worth it. If Plex adds too many garbage/bloat features or removes useful features then I'll jump ship to jellyfin immediately. Same boat for paying for bitwarden vs self hosting vaultwarden
- This is the problem with proprietary software, it starts out fine, but as it get more popular the value goes down

What sucks to me is how hard jellyfin is to setup outside the network

Jellyfin is generally just as easy to set up for external access. The only thing you really need to worry about is having a dynamic IP. If you have a domain name, then setting up dynamic DNS is quite straightforward.
The only issue I have with people remotely accessing Jellyfin is that you cannot set a total system bandwidth cap. You can set a per stream cap, but that doesn’t help if you have too many people accessing your server at once.
- I'm not trying to sound like a dick but having your own domain name isnt something most people have
- Maybe time to look into load balancers, e.g. nginx
- Regarding domain names: tailscale funnel rocks!
Huh? You need an open port and a TLS certificate, that's about it. If you're CG-NATed you need some form of proxy in front, but that's not Jellyfin's fault.

Stuff like this really makes me want to switch to jellyfin, but I watch stuff from me and my friend groups libraries and Plex lets me search for shows across my entire friend group at once. I'm afraid I'll be waiting forever for jellyfin to allow federating servers so that bob@red.instance can share a library with alice@blue.instance allowing Alice to browse red+blue instance content from their home instance UI instead of requiring an account with every instance.

Okay, this is obnoxious and all.

But what the hell is 'narcing'?

Old term. Think it was short for "narcotics agent", used to call someone a snitch basically
- I think it's somehow related to the prohibition era. Perhaps alcohol was under the jurisdiction of narcotics?
  It's odd that above doesn't know it, I thought its definition was well known and would have had no qualms about using it, I wonder if it's a regional word now?
Present participle of 'narc.'
- I’d categorize it as a gerund in this context.

While it should have been opt-in it is not that dramatic. The server owner can see what is played anyways. And since the primary use case is a home and friends setup it is vastly different to a Netflix scale privacy break.

Yes, a server owner can see what is played. But this is sending email summaries about what I am watching on my own server. Even if that friend is not invited to my particular server, and even libraries that I haven't shared with anyone.
It doesn't even matter if I'm embarrassed by what it sends. That information is private. Period.
Are you saying that this information isn't collected by Plex for a use case that doesn't obviously require it? Because if it is the case, then it's a big fucking deal.

More about this here: https://lemmy.ml/post/8550733

So it's a fork of XBMC aka Kodi now. Does Kodi do this shit too?

No, kodi is still true to their roots.
It was forked so long ago that people born on that date are now legally able to drive on public roads.

Anybody that still runs Plex deserves that shit. Its been a piece of shit for years and only gets worse.

How does Jellyfin compare to Kodi?

You can't really compare the two. Kodi is a media player. Jellyfin is a media server and has a bunch of clients to access that sever. There's even a kodi addon to connect to Jellyfin. It's called jellycon and I am experimenting with it now.
Different use cases.
They work great together. I have jellyfin as my media server / manager /backend, and kodi on my nvidia shield connected to my TV as my main media player / frontend. In kodi, the jellyfin plugin syncs all metadata from jellyfin to kodi's library, and streams the media from my jellyfin.

Article says if you added "friends" to share what you're watching, those are the only ones who get the email about what their "friends" are watching...

And it just reports content on your Plex that's registered on IMDB...

Like, it's not plex spying on your search history and reporting what pron you like to your friends.

If you have porn on your plex:

Why?
Maybe don't sign up "friends" so they can see what you're watching...

You do know IMDB has porn listings, right? And “friends” includes people you share a library with, in either direction.
- Yeah, that's a lot more fucked up.
  Share one movie and it tells them everything now?
  Even libraries have options to be shared, if it's recommending from non shared libraries that's real fucked up and sounds like a bug and not intentional