Selfhosted

The downfall of Plex needs to be compiled into an 80 minute YouTube video with sponsors spaced in for NordVPN and Viagra

I’m a big fan of Jellyfin. I would say it is easily family approved. That is for my family in my household who is using it on our home Wi-Fi.

But I am not about to expose it publicly. I have WireGuard set up on my immediate family’s devices and that is mostly ok (until you get on a public Wi-Fi that fails because you haven’t gone through their portal and can’t because the vpn is on, or you are on an airplane’s Wi-Fi with no internet trying to watch their movies and it doesn’t work until you turn off the vpn). Explaining this to my wife has been a nonstop battle.

I’d like it open it up to my siblings families, especially because I have the ersatztv plug-in to create approved child stations, but so many smart tvs and devices don’t support a vpn. How have others handled that situation?

Speedrunning destroying your platform.

Got rid of Plex a long time ago. Trash ass program

"Updated “Who does Plex share or sell Personal Data with?” to include the Plex activity that you share based on your account visibility and activity settings as well as sharing/sale of certain Personal Data to third parties.

Nothing changes for Plex Accounts created before March 20, 2025 unless you change your preferences here.
If you are a new user and created an account after March 20, 2025, you can update your preferences here.
The types of data that we may share has not changed
We do not and will not collect information about content or titles in your personal media library or what you’ve played.
Personal media users: we do NOT, and will not, share or sell any information about the content and titles on or your use of a personal media server.
Consent is required by all Plex Accounts created before March 20, 2025 for the sale of their data."

Seems like it's just for their other services, which I already assumed they were tracking and selling view counts.

I don't know why everyone in the selfhosting community still even mentions Plex or uses it.

It's closed source, not free; Jellyfin is a no brainer yet people still go to Plex??

Relevant XKCD: https://www.xkcd.com/743/

Jellyfin is the way. Costs nothing other than the hardware needed and nobody is selling anything about you.

Our personal streaming library with Jellyfin is bigger than any public service and we can add to it from VHS, DVD, Blueray, though extra equipment was required for the VHS/Blueray.

It’s also available anywhere we go and we can set up separate accounts for different family members. There’s even a phone app.

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.