I never understood this, it's your selfhosted server but you kind of don't own it and depend on them, so you just have an application which depends on a their service which means plex isn't 100% selfhostable, correct?
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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Plex has been hostile towards self-hosting since the very beginning. They have been asked to add local authentication for more than 10 years.
Yup, as soon as they started the mandatory login bullshit, I bounced. Companies keep adding this "feature" as a way to control your stuff: Doom on Switch, Halo Master Chief edition, nvidia, my fucking mouse(!?); all need a login for no other reason than to add a point of failure/killswitch.
Same here. When my Internet is out, my household needs to still be able to watch shows from my NAS locally without having to jump through hoops. Plex wouldn't let me just do that anymore.
Moving to Emby has had its own small issues, but with the internet out the family can still just load the TV app and watch a show like normal. They don't need to know how to do any troubleshooting, alternate login options, etc.
The problem is that they want to route control through their own servers for making sure you can't use some of the extra features without paying.
A few years back they dropped some clients (including the one for my old TV) because they were dropping support for legacy SSL ciphers on their servers - and those devices didn't have support for the new ciphers. This is a pretty stupid dependency due to the way they want to do things - so I moved to jellyfin back then, and have been encouraging people to drop plex ever since.
To be fair, old ssl isn’t really ssl at all & considered to be a vulnerability by a lot of libraries.
Without them forcing you to go through their server for user authentication it'd be a thing local to your network - where it wouldn't really matter. Without that stupid requirement you also could just keep unsupported clients running by yourself.
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A few years back they dropped some clients (including the one for my old TV) because they were dropping support for legacy SSL ciphers on their servers
TLS 1.0/1.1? Those were deprecated and dropped by the IETF with RFC 8996. You can't even get a certificate using 1.0/1.1 anymore unless you are self-signing.
You can also allow unauthenticated users on certain networks, usually limited to your local nets. But I do agree that doesn't solve the problem. I'd love to allow users to optionally use local authentication with, eg, Authelia, something built in, or an LDAP backend.
as always for profit orgs are proven to be abusive on their customers... so happy that I'm using Jellyfin
lol "Selfhosted" my ass - that's why FOSS is superior regardless of features.
Exactly, open source is always worth the extra effort, if any, to get things working. Contribute!
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This is the last straw. I already was very shakey with all the restrictions that were piling up, but this is just one thing too much. Cancelling my subscription and installing jellyfin.
Yep same here, I've been curious about trying Jellyfin for a long time now so this just gives me all the more reason
I switched to Jellyfin a long time ago and I don't regret it at all. Even for non-techie friends and family the experience has been more pleasant.
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Jellyfin ftw
Plex is still the better platform. Jellyfish lacks so much features and isn't supported on most native TV OS.
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switched to Jellyfin, took about 10 minutes to have it up and running. Cya Plex
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Am not even surprised, Plex went to the gutter long ago when someone gave them the brilliant idea to start a media company on software used by pirates.
Why is anyone still using plex?
After the last time they fucked over their userbase, jellyfin was created, an open source system that is awesome.
Dump plex, come to jellyfin, we got cookies.
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This seems kinda scummy. If someone breaks TOS then ban the one account. I’ve seen for years now people bringing up jellyfin, knew it was coming when I saw this headline. I never tried it because I have iOS devices and an Apple TV, but now I see there are 3rd party apps for jellyfin on iOS/tvos. I may try it out, move if it satisfies my needs.
Been using Jellyfin for about a year, love it. I watch movies and TV shows with my spouse, and listen to my music collection on the go with Finamp.
Works great on desktop Linux, GrapheneOS, and my Steam Deck.
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Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| HTTP | Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| PIA | Private Internet Access brand of VPN |
| Plex | Brand of media server package |
| SSL | Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption |
| TLS | Transport Layer Security, supersedes SSL |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
| VPS | Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) |
| nginx | Popular HTTP server |
8 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 12 acronyms.
[Thread #138 for this sub, first seen 15th Sep 2023, 05:35] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Im very curious about what was the actual violation
It's about the server access sellers, but to block a whole major VPS instead of accounts that commit the violation is kinda absurd.
It looks like another step towards further restricting what users can do with their servers, local or virtual.
Yeah I got sick of feeling like it wasn't my plex server even though I have plex lifetime pass. Have stopped using it in favour of jellyfin
I tried out Plex when I was first setting up my media server and having to do a bunch of stuff through Plex servers was one of the main reasons I jumped ship immediately. The hardware is in my house, the files are in my house, I never want it to leave my house, I kept thinking why the hell do I need to mess around with Plex accounts and online connections??
HEY WANNA WATCH LIVE TV?
No thanks I have my offline files
LIVE TV LET'S GOOOOO
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So these are people that sell access to (presumably media-filled) existing Plex installations?
That does seem like a problematic thing to do and I understand why Plex wants to shut that down.
But surely their tons of online-integrations and user-account-requirements gives them other tools at their disposal than outright blocking a major VPS provider, that seems insane.
If the vast majority of people on they host were selling access it makes sense. Users don’t want to hear it but Plex has to shield themselves from lawsuits. If you willfully let people break the law with your product as a feature you have no argument in court. Same goes for why they add all these features they core users don’t want. They need a reason to argue that they don’t just make money on piracy. FOSS doesn’t usually get sued though, but nothing is preventing it. Everyone needs to be careful and if your going to illegally download movies don’t be greedy and sell access to it.
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More reasons I'm glad we switched to Jellyfin
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Forget their reasoning, the fact that they can block access at all should be reason enough for anyone to abandon them. Glad I abandoned my lifetime membership years ago.
Why is every company committing suicide by user hate?
Is there something in the corporate water?
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I had to move to cloud cause energy prices. Using plex just to having easy access to my music collection. Now need to find good alternative for plexamp.
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I abandoned my lifetime plex license long ago. It’s the sunk cost fallacy, some people are immune to it and others aren’t. Quite obviously some people here aren’t, because they still defend plex.
I won't defend Plex, but Jellyfin just isn't quite there as an alternative yet. Their ATV app leaves still leaves a lot to be desired. I'm hoping it gets there sooner than later though so I can finally jump ship. The only other thing I really want is some tool to migrate the "watched" status of all my content to Jellyfin.
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Good thing I didn't get a lifetime pass back when it was on sale, was kind of tempting a couple years ago
I understand what you’re saying here, but I want to let you know that it just sounds like “sour grapes”.
It sounds like this provider is allowing something that could put Plex in legal hot water; why would they allow this and potentially jeopardize everything for all Plex users?
A lot of people self host so they are in control. This is Plex taking away that control, plain and simple.
I don't know how many people host completely legitimately acquired content in their libraries, but your reasoning is such a cop out. Are you gonna defend them if they start scanning libraries for potentially illegally obtained content and blocking that because it could "put them in legal hot water?"
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ITT: People who don't use Plex proudly talking about how they don't use Plex.
This move makes sense to me. They could be liable for what's hosted in the cloud, and on top of that you can't pay for access, and the host is known as a great place to let people do that.
I really don't understand the people who use jellyfin but insist on shitting on Plex. You can both use jellyfin and not also not be smug about it. It's the same reason people are tired of the Linux user or back in the day why android users were so annoying.
They could be liable for what’s hosted in the cloud
Liable for something hosted on someone's private VPS? That's like saying Apache or Nginx is liable if someone uses it to host a torrent site. I don't really buy it tbh.
I really don’t understand the people who use jellyfin but insist on shitting on Plex.
I think people are allowed to critique and express disappointment over a product that they paid for. Just because you personally don't care about the direction of Plex doesn't mean other users can't express their valid viewpoints. Plex at one point said they didn't really care what people put up on their private servers and now they're dialing that back and essentially asserting control over what people already paid for. People are right to be upset.
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