135
submitted 4 months ago by CallMeAl@piefed.zip to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

I've been thinking about this more and more. According to the sidebar, this community is "A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control." Based on that I don't think Plex qualifies.

Privacy: Plex clearly records the metadata of what you watch. When I used it, it would send me a report by email of what my "friends" were watching. Even with that turned off, their services still track telemetry.

Control: Plex has all of it. They can (and do) make unilateral changes to the service, how authentication works, where you can run it, etc.

So I ask, when you are hosting something that is entirely dependent on a commercial entity to function, is Plex really selfhosting in the spirit of this community?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] remon@ani.social 12 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

It's not just about watching content, but also about having it neatly organised with your watch history tracked in a easy to use interface. And on top of that, making it easily accessible to friends/family with minimum effort.

open source to me means open source, not open/paywall/ source.

It sure means that, but not quite sure why this is relevant. There is obviously a big overlap between self-hosters and foss enthusiast on lemmy, but for me they are unrelated.

this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
135 points (76.3% liked)

Selfhosted

62801 readers
1065 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Detailed Rules Post

  1. Be civil.

  2. No spam.

  3. Posts are to be related to self-hosting.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title.

  6. No trolling.

  7. Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.

  8. AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS