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Is Plex really Self Hosting? (piefed.zip)

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

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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?

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[-] irmadlad@lemmy.world 4 points 4 months ago

Back in the late 60s, I heard a song by Jimi Hendrix called 'If A 6 Were 9'. One line has stuck with me for decades and I've pretty much lived my life this way:

I got my own life to live. I'm the one that's gonna have to die when it's time for me to die. So let me live my life the way I want to.

this post was submitted on 26 May 2026

135 points (76.3% liked)

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