Plex Users Fear New Feature Will Leak Porn Habits to Their Friends and Family
"I can see that one of my friends is apparently watching a ton of cheesy, soft porn stuff," a user said of Plex's Week in Review email and Discover Together feature.
Many Plex users were alarmed when they got a “week in review” email last week that showed them what they and their friends had watched on the popular media server software. Some users are saying that their friends’ softcore porn habits are being revealed to them with the feature, while others are horrified by the potentially invasive nature feature more broadly.
Plex is a hybrid streaming service/self-hosted media server. In addition to offering content that Plex itself has licensed, the service allows users to essentially roll their own streaming service by making locally downloaded files available to stream over the internet to devices the server admin owns. You can also “friend” people on Plex and give them access to your own server.
A new feature, called “Discover Together,” expands social aspects of Plex and introduces an “Activity” tab: “See what your friends have watched, rated, added to their Watchlist, or shared with you,” Plex notes. It also shares this activity in a “week in review” email that it sent to Plex users and people who have access to their servers.
This has greatly alarmed a wide swatch of Plex’s user base, who have blown up the Plex forums, the Discover Together blog post comment section, and Reddit with posts about disastrous overshares created by the feature. A sampling of posts: “Discover Together and Week in Review emails are a MASSIVE breach of privacy and trust!,” “Security breach: Why is my friend receiving notifications to rate movies I’ve watched?,” “Weekly review emails data leak,” “Plex crossed a line with ‘Your week in review’ emails today.’”
The feature is opt-out, meaning that many people were very surprised to get these emails and see this feature, as it’s up to users to proactively turn it off (instructions here and here).
“I can see that one of my friends is apparently watching a ton of cheesy, soft porn stuff (think classic ‘skinemax’ fare) from some server (it’s not mine) or Plex channel, and I am 100 percent sure they would be mortified to know that I know this,” one user wrote on the Plex Forums. “Now replace this friend, who’s just enjoying their downtime with some cheeky T&A, with a teenager who may be having difficulty figuring out feelings about their sexuality and are just trying to explore by watching LBGT dramas to see if anything there resonates or can help them figure things out. Suddenly, one of their intolerant friends or parents gets a detailed email report with a cheery title listing every little thing they’re watching…This is a dystopian nightmare of a feature and I honestly can’t believe it’s been rolled out as opt-out like this. SHAME ON YOU, PLEX!”
“I wonder how many people just had their week’s porn selections emailed to their Plex friends,” another user posted. “I just got an email about a friend’s watching habits which he definitely didn’t want to share. He insists he’s never opted into any data sharing, but…it went out anyway.”
“I’m sure there’s a certain percentage of people who want to know what kind of porn their grandma likes, but I’m hoping it’s not the majority,” another posted.
Otto Kerner, who is a moderator of the official Plex forums, said that porn viewing habits would only be shared if Plex can make a “match” of the media with online databases like IMDb. “Many pr0n titles are either not listed there at all [sic],” Kerner wrote. It’s worth noting, however, that there are many adult titles on IMDb.
There are hundreds of posts about the issue on the official Plex forums, many of which point out that many Plex users chose to use the service in the first place because it is a “self-hosted” alternative to streaming that many people go into believing they will have more control and privacy than is offered by Hulu, Netflix, and other streaming services. Plex is also used by many users to play and stream files that they have illegally pirated (the ability to do this is largely behind the initial popularity of Plex), though the company has been trying to move away from the perception that most people are using it to play pirated content. “The fact that this data is available to you AT ALL … That is just … Mind boggling, and completely against the very notion of self hosting,” one user wrote. “I feel betrayed that was done without telling me that this data was going to be collected. Let alone acted upon. It’s dangerous. Certain entities would LOVE to have that data…which could mean jail time for some.”
“The ‘See what your friends are watching’ will be great for all the people with secret porn libraries. Or when you start watching a Jan 6th documentary, and you see Aunt Becky start commenting about it being part of a satanic conspiracy,” a commenter on Plex’s blog post announcing the feature wrote. “I can also say that not one person I have talked to has ever liked the idea that I can see what they're watching from my server.”
Plex did not respond to requests for comment sent from 404 Media. Plex employees have been posting regularly in the forums explaining that people can opt out of the data sharing, and have also said media watch “sync events,” which it uses to track viewing history, do not tell the company the nature of the file played: “There is no way to know whether something being ‘watched’ occurred because you went and saw it at the theater and then marked it on the Discover page when you got home, you watched through a personal Plex Media Server Library, or anything else.”
It’s unfortunate Plex seems hell bent on adding features nobody asked for while there forums are full of issues that have gone unsolved for years.
If only there was a FOSS alternative to plex which slowly gained popularity...
I for one would love to use Jellyfin. Though I've found in my personal experience it's not as stable as Plex nor has as many features yet. I currently have both running on my home system but primarily use Plex. One day I will fully switch.
I put off using Jellyfin for years because of comments like this. Finally made the switch three years ago and lo and behold... it's just a better Plex. More customizable, less intrusive and the syncplay actually works. There are a few issues client-side depending on your platform, but other than that I don't get the criticism.
Does it have an official app on all smart tvs and plug devices (Roku/firestick) like plex? That would be the hurdle for me, all of my family is happy with plex because every device including the $400 trash Black Friday TVs have a plex app already on them, they just need to sign in.
It does have a Roku app, but it's very limited in features and barely developed. It will probably work if all your files are x264 in your native language, however it doesn't work for my use case. I tried playing some anime encoded with x265 and it was unwatchable for me because:
A. The TV could not handle the decode and there is no (sensible) way to force server x264 transcoding for just the TV, and:
B. Selecting subtitles and audio tracks is painful and sometimes impossible. I tried changing my Jellyfin settings, my Roku settings, using the selectors on the episodes, even setting the default tracks in the video files. Nothing worked to have dual audio or dual subtitle files play the correct tracks.
I can't speak for any other ecosystems, only Roku.
I have a Samsung TV and there is no official app for it. You have to side load it from a community repo. This was another factor for why I don't use Jellyfin as much, especially since my partner primarily uses the TV and is not as tech savvy.
Yeah, it is the best
Curious what issues you have? In my experience plex was very annoying to work with while Jellyfin has been working stable like a charm.
Hardest part has been sideloading it on a smart tv But other then that it worked out of the box.
I do however keep everything local and offline, what really pushed me away from plex was how it kept nagging about making an account and “verifying that i own this server” ever single time i wanted to watch sm.
I have two main issues:
The appletv app isn’t as smooth and fast as plex. It is hard to convince my wife to switch when the user experience is not as good.
No profile fast switch. Unlike any other streaming service (Plex included) jellyfin doesn’t offer a list of profiles on startup to select who’s watching. This is a huge issue for me, as my wife, son and I uses the same devices with our own profiles.
Are you using Swiftfin?
Yes. I’ve tried all the available clients.
Interesting. I've actually had the opposite experience. Jellyfin has been smoother and more reliable than Plex. Maybe it's worth checking out Emby, I think it solves the fast client switching (but I'm not entirely positive). I've just taken to running both. When I hit Plex snags I pop over to Jellyfin.
I guess milage may vary on the road you take and your destination as i don’t use either of those.
I believe tv use is very low priority for them as its also tricky to get compatible and working, quite telling that the native ios app is from a third party with the official one being a browser wrapper.
I was considering making a separate account for my kid once they are old enough to operate the remote so thanks for the heads-up.
As a dedicated Jellyfin user, 100% agree. I love it, but glitches where it loses my seek progress and requires restarting the video, or the terrible subtitle support on Roku, or the often lackluster library management (they improve it slowly though!), and more I'm sure, these all make it much harder to recommend.
One feature I enjoy is hardware acceleration without paying for it
Plex charges for THAT?
It's paid if you want to use hardware acceleration for transcoding ("Hardware-Accelerated Streaming").
https://support.plex.tv/articles/115002178853-using-hardware-accelerated-streaming/
Sounds pretty ass to me. It's your hardware lmao
their servers is what actually does the streaming tho (over internet), you only provide the storage and content
Jesus what a joke of a self-hosted service it would be if true, but that doesn't quite sound right. You install plex on your server and you'll direct Plex (the program) towards it and that's where you'll be streaming from, utilizing your own hardware for transcoding (software or hardware transcoded). Their servers are (afaik) used for their (Plex's) whatever content and I think authentication (which is why you might get hit with a situation where you can't log into your local net's Plex instance when you don't have internet).
Even the article says:
And so on. You provide storage, content, it streams from your computer (dunno if through their servers or direct) and you provide the hardware for transcoding and so on. You're running it on your hardware, but you're not allowed to utilize it fully without paying.
Tried installing it once and literally had to give up, whereas Plex works mostly on the first try each time I've changed oses/servers. But yeah I wish I could use jellyfin
Docker should be piss easy
One would think
It definitely is in most cases
I'll give it another shot eventually. If memory serves I had trouble getting the container started at all, until I found a specific way to configure it, then once it started, it had a lot of issues with metadata that at the time felt like a headache
It’s easy to get started; not as easy to maintain.
What do you mean? I don't think there's much at all of maintenance needed to be done.
Saving data outside containers so that updates don’t hose said data.
Only updating one project’s container at a time and not all of them.
Backing up data.
And the fact that there’s no good GUI I can install on windows (without WSL) to manage a remote docker system.
I've never had issues with their data. Logs, configs or media. Just set up the volumes and you're done afaik.
Updating single container can be done with a simple pull and recreate or with compose by having a single docker thing on that particular compose file. Not that I've chosen to do that, many services are simpler since a lot of them work together anyway.
Backing up should be as easy as backing up anything. Put all your docker configs in the same location, save the compose file(s), check that the paths are same in new system and you'll be up and running.
It’s tough when the directions leave out making a folder outside of the container to store configs. That’s burned me once.
I’m not looking to update a single container but a single project’s container; just because I want to update project A’s containers doesn’t mean I also want to update project B’a containers. The only instructions I’ve found update all projects at the same time.
I’m not so worried about the config files as I am worried about backing up the data inside the containers being created from data outside the containers.
It seems to be step #3 here https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/installation/container/
If you're using docker compose, put them into a different compose file. Then you can manage them separately.
Data inside the containers? All the important and necessary data should be outside of them. That's sorta one of the big points. You shouldn't have anything changing inside them.
That's why I stopped paying for Plex about 7 years ago. The CEO clearly has other priorities than making Plex serve home media.
They’ve decided money is more important than a good product, I just turn everything extra off as soon as they announce it on my server
They're a for-profit company. All of their new features are aimed at increasing revenue, either by introducing ad based content (and growing the user base that watches ad based content), or new features behind a paywall. The only way for those bugs to get fixed is if they risk reducing potential revenue.
That's how most development works nowdays, doesn't it? Move fast and break things, create constant new content before people tire of the old, etc. Sad.
I think the feature is cool and I'm looking forward to it personally.
Maybe they should have made it opt in, but social features like this on other platforms like discord and stream aren't, so .. eh.
Honestly Plex has always given me the icks. Its weird hybrid of self-hosted but managed through their servers always struck me as the worst of both worlds. I'd rather put in a small amount extra effort to properly self-host my stuff, or do significantly less work and use something cloud-based. I just don't understand what niche Plex is supposed to serve.
Same reaction here. My Plex install lasted until I realized that I had to log into their servers to watch my own content. WTF is an understatement.
You don't have to log into it, you can turn off authentication for your local network.
If you're accessing it over the Internet without a VPN, then it should be no surprise that it requires a "cloud" login.
It is a bit of a surprise though because I can host my own authentication (Keycloak, Authelia, Google OAuth as a stretch), or use the built in auth from the service the way Jellyfin does it.
I use Plex because it Just Works™ for my family, but eagerly waiting for Jellyfin to keep catching up.
Who said anything about authentication to access it? A server cannot be set up without creating an account with the company and allowing the server to send Plex data.
You did. It was implied in your statement about logging into their servers. If you didn't mean that then you should have worded it differently.
Wow, you not only think you're a mind reader, you lecture like a 1st grade English teacher. You must be really fun at parties.
Yes, everything that you imagine about me is true. Have fun imagining whatever you want.
Honestly it's a good feature for most, same with auth being a cloud service. But it would be nice to be able to self host that part too.
For remote access an account makes sense, but like many people I have no need of accessing my content without a VPN. There are other options out there that do not require logging into a company's server to set up a local server.
I think if you are aiming for the general public it's great that you can handle secure remote access and authentication. Because those things are the easiest to mess up and leave you vulnerable.
Plex is great at what it offers, and if that offering didn't fit your needs then by all means use something else.
I cannot fathom why Plex is so dominant while Jellyfin, for my taste, is better. And Jellyfin is explicitly free, contributors cannot be paid, because they are funded by their intense hatred of capitalism.
Is Netflix for torrents. On my TV, on my phone, at my in-laws. Pause on my phone and resume on my TV.
Surely it can't be that hard to get it.
The remote stuff is easily achievable with other methods, like hosting a VPN server of some sort.
This but instead of familiarity, it's capability
https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/average_familiarity.png
https://m.xkcd.com/2501/
I used the embed version in the hopes it would, well, embed lol, but I guess it didn't work, thanks tho!
Requires a lot more setup, especially on the client side. Media server software make things a lot easier.
I just Selfhost tailscale now days, but it's true that setting up VPNs can be a pain, especially if it's containers and/or supposed to be an overlay network.
no need to setup or pay for ipv4 tunnels (which is basically what plex handles for you) or ipv6 (while ipv6 IS great, prefixes offered by isps are usually dynamic and you'll need ipv6 on your mobile connection too)
getting a public ipv4 is basically impossible task nowadays, most isps only hand them out to registered business on enterprise grade connections, and even if you're a business, STATIC ip is an extra upsell.
and isps that do hand out them to customers charge extra for it, and usually quite a lot.
My ISP gives static IP for free to all customers. Other popular ISPs in my region which are popular among people even moderately savvy will offer it for a very modest fee ($5/month extra is what a quick Google suggests).
Or you can set up dynamic DNS. Use Cloudflare to point to your home IP address, and run an extremely simple script which automatically updates that IP address with Cloudflare.
The only way it becomes a problem is if your home Internet connection is behind CGNAT and can't be changed. (From what I've heard, many ISPs that use CGNAT by default will give you a public IP as long as you notify them of your desire for one.) But that's an egregiously bad service and you should be looking to move to a better company.
getting a public ip is usually either impossible or a paid service
God damn Jesus H tap dancing Christ, stop adding social shit and spam emails to everything. Whoever came up with this needs to be sacked, in addition to the people who hired that person to begin with.
It's the investors, it always is. The CEO has been there for a long time.
Apologies, the people responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked, have been sacked
And bitten by llamas
Omg, does everything have to be shared to social media? Do we need to comment on everything? Every fucking news site begs for my email address.
Why the people that hired him?
They make terrible decisions, and they might do it again.
The people asking questions about the sacking have also been sacked.
It's about sending a message.
My privacy is again protected by not having friends!
Seriously though, I didn't know there were ways to follow/friend people on plex. Why would one want to see what others are watching?
People share their plex servers with friends
I'm just seeing you can share libraries. How has plex not been DMCA'd out of existence?
Plex isn't hosting the illegal content and that which they are hosting they properly license. Plex in particular is pushimg harder and harder to host content for you, instead of you hosting your own.
Officially, the 'personal media server' side of things is for sharing home videos/pictures, not commercialized content. (this applies to Plex, Emby, and Jellyfin)
It's the users/server operators responsibly to have the correct licensing for whatever they are hosting to others.
Also Plex has been cozying up to media companies and the more they do the more action they've taken. Banning whole hosting providers (Hetzner) and even banning some small-time users running small servers.
Plex themselves aren't doing the sharing
they are proxying the data tho
it operate exactly like Netflix except data is stored on your drive
And DVD Jon wasn't decrypting the DVDs
Yes he was. He decrypted DVDs which was the thing he got in trouble for.
Also breaking encryption is legally different than copyright infringement
No idea I've never used it I just know some people who use it
I'm guessing because it's not illegal. Their users are the ones breaking the law. Like reddit or Facebook, the platform isn't held liable for the illegal activity it promotes.
I'd like to know what my friends are watching because then I might choose to watch the same thing so I could discuss it with them, especially if it was something I was planning on eventually watching anyway.
But OTOH I really don't want to know about any of my friends' porn watching habits.
But don't you and your friends discuss what you're watching? We talk about everything we like so the only things I'd learn from this are the things they watch but don't like, their guilty pleasures, and their porn habits (though I also can't imagine using plex for porn). I don't want to know any of that.
More issues caused by features no one asked for but done anyways so investors can see "growth"
I wonder if there will ever come a time when the stock market ends up defeating itself because investors demand growth which makes the products shitty which drives away customers which causes contraction instead of growth.
Listen when companies SCREAM at you that they are intentionally ruining their service and selling you out. This is Plex saying very clearly to the public, "it's been fun y'all, but it's time for you to find an alternative service, start migrating NOW because it's only going to get worse from here"
Sadly some people won't get the message until Plex starts providing their movie streaming habits on request to the RIAA for lawsuits.
Edit: I meant MPAA, not RIAA (though they are probably giving it to them as well).
By the gods are you serious?
I left Plex when they added TV, because I felt the exact same way. It sucks to be right.
Yeah, this is why my lifetime licence will go unused in the future ...
Don't worry too much about it going to waste.
What usually happens next is that your "lifetime licence" turns into an "ohhhh that's a licence for the OLD system. We've introduced Plex Ultimate 2000! It's got all these great new features, and it's only $3.95 a month. Don't worry, we won't forget our greatest supporters, whoever has a lifetime licence for the worn out, old system, their first year's subscription will be 25 percent off, yaay!"
Well maybe I don't really trust their products or their company with my data anymore and since you can't run it entirely on premise, that's about it.
Soon as I saw that with Plex I noped the fuck out
Still the only self-hosted option that has a native app for my old ass TV so I'm not switching until it becomes more trouble than it's worth or my TV breaks.
What is it with all this "sharing with friends and family"? FFS if I want to share something, I will fucking call them and tell them about it, I don't need some stupid app doing that for me
I got blindsided by this in the same way. I was sitting next to a coworker and they said "Oh hey, a report on what you've been watching on Plex!"
Now, I thought that it was reporting what I'd been watching on his Plex server, and I've always known he can see what I watch. But he showed me the email. It was stuff I'd been watching on my own Plex server.
Now it wasn't embarrassing stuff, as it's my family Plex server, but I was absolutely livid. This is private. Period. I can think of many, many reasons that someone would want to keep this private, even if it's not about porn.
I alerted my friends, and we all figured out how to turn it off. It seems like it shouldn't be that big of a deal, but I feel extremely violated. I absolutely know that someone in that meeting said "Hey, some users won't like this," and they were overridden. Because some senior director had a metric to hit. And that means they no longer care about their reputation. It's a sign that they've gotten too big to care.
Mid stage enshitification. More is coming. Probably unskipable ads like every other service is moving to.
"A more affordable way to use Plex [or another subscription service]" is how it always starts...
"I see from your viewing that you are bi-curious."
I replaced Plex with Jellyfin a few months ago and it's been working great for my needs.
I am trying to do the same migration from plex to jellyfin but jellyfin keeps crashing on the server with 'out of memory' in the logs. As soon as I can stabilize that I will dump Plex lifetime. I initially had sync server setting turned on in Plex and Plex kept sending cleartext phone SMS about what I had watched the day before. That is turned off now. I asked Plex corp for a copy of my data. They sent it to me but 'forgot' to send the database table with watch history. They sent me that table when I complained it was missing. Fuck Plex and their spyware.
I tried jellyfin a year ago and could not switch as it did not have transcoded downloads feature. All of my library is 4k HDR and do not want to download dozens of gb of movies on my phone when traveling. Do you know by any chance that they have implemented this feature already?
You should learn how to use
ffmpegcommands.Lol, I won't be using ffmpeg commands while I'm on holiday traveling and just want to watch a movie. It is faster just to download it from a torrent lower quality directly than jump through these hoops. And if I am doing that, why do then I need a media center anyway, I can just go back to the old days playing downloaded files directly.
The only thing holding me in plex is transcoded downloads.
Take a look at Emby.
I wish that I, as the server admin, could opt out all of my users from this on their behalf. Shit like this should be opt in and it is seriously fucked up to enable by default, porn or not.
As much as server admins would love that option (and every time Plex roll out a new feature like the TIDAL integration or the free Plex content this question gets asked), it's never going to happen because from Plex's perspective they're not your users, they're Plex's users. Doesn't matter if the only reason they use Plex is to access your server, they're not your users so you have no control over their settings.
We can disagree with them about that fact as much as we like, but that's the reality of it, and I don't see it changing anytime soon.
But like...why would anyone even want that for normal content?
There's no shortage of good movies and shows out there. If someone opts in to sharing something with me, they can do it in just about any way. Generally speaking, discoverability in media is not my problem. This sort of feature is great for studios and streaming services, to keep people watching; but for self-hosted it makes no sense at all.
Hell, just add a "recommend this to your friends" option on videos if you want to make plex more social. Complete watch history is creepy stalker levels of 'social'
Softcore? How embarrassing. Go hardcore or go home.
That’s why Jellyfin exists, though admittedly, it was a little more difficult for me to set up the sharing than I would have preferred. Now, I’m up and running, so all is well.
Heck, Emby is still an option if you don’t want a fully open-sourced one. Plex has been steadily moving in this direction for at least the last year or so, which makes me surprised at folks’ surprise over their “privacy” with Plex.
Lol this really sucks for Plex users, but I'm glad I left that steaming pile of shit software. I've been using Jellyfin for two years now and have never had to deal with sudden new shitty default-on features that appear from out of nowhere. Not once. With Plex, that happened like every other release. I don't miss it.
Once you get the reverse proxy or a vpn set up, you are golden.
I had more issues setting up old cartoons with Airing vs DVD ordering...
Lol reminds me of Windows plastering all your photos on the home screen and people being mortified about it
Hello jellyfin my old friend!
Anytime I feel that jellyfin isn't ready yet, I am so SO happy that I'm not using Plex and I notice that jellyfin is pretty awesome
Who keeps their porn in Plex
There are way better software to Stash that
Yeah, and you don't even have to use any software, you can just store it in a folder no one would care about, best hidden with a name resembling something boring no one would surely open
I keep my porn in a folder labeled "taxes" and my tax documents in a folder labeled "porn"
Best comment of the month award goes to you, genuinely made me chuckle
Plot twist he hates seeing nudity but gets really turned on seeing a tax document.
Don't kink shame!
Or in a Veracrypt container called "10 hours of rain.avi".
Many have caught onto the "boring name" thing and will click on any folder with a mundane name even slightly out of place. Encrypted ZIP files still work though, lol.
I was just referring to the homework folder stereotype, i wouldn't be that stupid to do something like this
Unless you put them on Google in which case Google will break the encryption and look inside.
Absolutely true. Best practice is to assume your Google Drive is effectively public regardless of permissions. It is very easy for a Drive to get hacked in my experience, not even considering the surveillance from Alphabet.
Also bonus points if you are autistic. A lot of my folders are labeled with acronyms and my porn folder is the only one that is just random letters so it blends right in
Which is itself inside another folder nobody would look at.
"in a world where search doesn't exist, one man, one labrinth of folders he must click through."
Plex isn't another evil tech company, it's just full of stupid features and unresolved bugs. Jellyfin just isn't good enough to replace it yet; it's more finicky to setup, isn't as good as matching titles and displaying the metadata, and has fewer features. But it is catching up fast.
I set up jellyfin by pointing the prebuilt docker container to my media folder. And it just kinda worked.
Not saying your wrong, just that it wasn't my experience.
Fair enough. I had to manually add my server a few times before it stuck. When it got working, many shows were mismatched or no title matches were found, some shows had rogue seasons as their own entries, and the entire design philosophy seems less together. All that said, these are just growing pains of newer software. I have no doubt I will genuinely prefer how Jellyfin works one day.
Agreed, I had been putting off trying Jellyfin until Plex kept having issues with my Chromecast. I sat down and prepared myself for an ordeal and it just wasn't that.
There are different issues with it casting that Plex didn't have, but it hasn't balked at any of my media yet.
Same. For my needs (streaming 4k HDR over the LAN), Plex and jelleyfin have been basically equivalent
It's not evil, it's just for-profit.
If there's money to be made by implementing a feature, they have incentive to do it, even if it actively makes the product worse. So long as it doesn't make you leave, or rather, so long as it doesn't make enough users leave that it negates the profit incentive.
A lot of people chose to use a self-hosted server to get AWAY from that tendency
Potato potahto.
The title matching is what made me go to Plex. Some shows were impossible to get sorted right on Jellyfin. Plus there's a lot more ecosystem around Plex
It's not impossible, you just need to name your files correctly. I haven't had a single issue with either Jellyfin or Plex. Used both for many years.
Out of curiosity, what sort of challenges did you have with setting up shows in jellyfin? I've been working with it and haven't encountered any issues yet
The issue, I think, was because most of what I use it for is anime. So some shows wanted the Japanese title, others wanted the English title, some couldn't be found at all. My US TV shows and movies never had that problem.
Try Emby. I left Plex a few years back and Emby has been everything Plex used to be.
Now we can all be congressmen.
Why does anyone use Plex when Jellyfin exists?
Plex is easier to set up and has more features that are more polished than what Jellyfin has. It's also a more well known name and been available a lot longer and it's app is available on a lot more devices including TVs themselves.
Jellyfin will one day be the superior option though once it's more polished and caught up in these areas.
How can setup get any easier than
apt install jellyfinand then going into a web UI to add a few folders?Plex is better at looking up show names, has an easier UI to set up more complicated stuff like hardware acceleration, has better clients across a variety of platforms... the only reason I'm using Jellyfin over Plex at this point is because I anticipate Plex shitting the bed. If you're on Plex, there's no reason to swap from it, and honestly if you're comparing the two as a newbie, Plex is still a much easier option.
These are a lot of the core reasons why Plex is better. Setting up a media server is a lot more complicated than just installing the package in your favourite distro.
Cause jellyfin has all the telltale signs of a half baked open source project, and plex doesn't.
I loath Plex. A year or two ago I tried to switch to JellyFin but there was no app for my then 2-year-old LG TV but there was for new versions. Apparently that was too old, and that's just a natural manifestation of a non-commercial app.
Maybe I would have better luck with a Roku but it's hard to beat the integration of built-in apps.
I use Jellyfin on Roku because my Samsung TV was too old for it.
It sucks on Roku.
I have not figured out the pattern for why some UHD videos don't play remotely while others do, only that debugging it is fiendishly difficult since it all works fine locally.
If you ever resume a video, the subtitles are out of sync. And I haven't found a way to adjust them.
Some videos with certain encodings play only on the PC app, but not Roku or Android.
For that matter Android is basically there to just easily download a copy, I don't even bother trying to play with it.
At least Plex consistently plays things.
It’s actually really easy to beat the integrated apps, you use a device actually meant to stream, not your TV. TVs lack pretty much everything to be a real streaming solution except for the video and audio output part … that they do well.
This is much more hassle. Apart from having to actually set up and configure such a device, every time you want to use it you've got to switch it on, switch your TV input and use a different remote to control it. This is far inferior to just using the TV remote to open Plex and navigate with the same remote. That's without considering that Plex is more polished and has an overall better UI as well.
I only use my TV with an AndroidTV box (never without it), and always just use the Bluetooth remote that controls the box. Linking the box and the TV through HDMI-CEC makes the TV automatically power on/off when I power on/off the box. It even lets the TV remote control the AndroidTV box through HDMI, but since I'd rather use the box remote which I don't have to point at the IR receiver, I only use the TV remote if I ever need to change audio/picture settings.
I really tried to get Jellyfin to work but I had so many issues. After a lot research and tinkering I finally got it to work... for about 30 seconds. No matter what I played the video would freeze shortly after starting and the audio would continue. Didn't matter if I was remote or on the same network. I gave up.
I've been using Emby now and it's just better, plus Jellyfin uses some of Emby's databases (as per a few crashlogs I've seen)
Why do you drive whatever you drive when you can just fly everywhere? Your question is stupid and you should feel stupid.
This wouldn't be an issue if people openly communicated their porn preferences to their loved ones. The answer is increased communication, not increased privacy.
Those 'share to facebook' buttons on pornhub were just ahead of their time is all...
"Backdoor Sluts 9" "you know who'd really enjoy this? My friends and family."
That said, Gen-X is entering grandparent territory. We literally created Internet porn.
we've been entering your grandma's territory for years
Go for it and report back
Said like a straight person who has never been shamed for their preferences. 🙄
It was intended as a dumb joke (emphasis on dumb), but you're completely right. That would be a shitty thing to experience and it's a major blind spot of my dumb joke.
I've encountered so much crazy on the Internet that I can't tell who's joking, trolling, behind 7 layers of irony, off their meds, and/or incredibly serious.
Trolling has never been easier. Back in the day, you'd get found out fairly quickly, but now? Everyone has such strong opinions and is so perpetually-riled up to the point of taking every opinion at face value and arguing back with such passion that it's almost irresistible to fuck with people these days.
I have been told my humor is on the dry side. I do take some amount of pleasure in watching people lose their shit over an obvious joke, but I'm not in it to be an intentionally insensitive asshole.
Awww. Well we all have our blind spots, and unfortunately this is a common one. But I do appreciate you acknowledgment and response. You stay wonderful! ♥ 💕
You, too! Even as I hate that I have them, I actually really like having light shone on my blind spots. It's enlivening.
Wow, quite a leap you did there.
I'm surprised by the amount of people who didn't understand this is a joke. It's not even that subtle.
Gave me a good laugh though
What makes you think anyone here is taking this seriously?
Probably the two downvotes it has haha
It's just got a disproportionate amount of downvotes
I deleted the Week in Review email thinking it was junk mail I hadn't gotten around to unsubscribing from, I went and got it out of trash to take a peek to learn that my Plex friend is watching a lot of The Office
US or UK?
US, my gf and I are doing our own The Office US watch through as well
Yes.
Anal Queens VII is soft porn?
Compared to anal queens 8 it's a romcom
< insert that scene from the first Clerks movie >
Just don’t use Plex if you’re streaming porn. Either use something like Jellyfin or Stash (which is specifically built for organizing collections of porn… if you’re into that kinda thing).
That's why I have a jellyfin server for pron and plex for regular media. I originally tried to setup plex for pron as well, but when testing I couldn't be absolutely certain that it would be hidden from other users
Why do you even need it in a Plex server, the whole advantage of a Plex server is that it gives you the same experience you get from a streaming platform. So you can sync your viewing between devices and get automatically arranged shows broken down between season and episode (so better than Amazon can manage it).
Why do you need that for your, I'm assuming, 2 min porn videos?
Wrong! 2 hour porn videos, watched 2 minutes at a time! Save my progress, I don't want to miss any of the story.
I totally get what you are saying but think of the average user, they are not like most people on this site who know and are willing to fiddle with Tech. Plex is a media server, porn comes in all sorts of images, gifs, and videos which are all media files. If you already have a server set up, it's as easy as adding a library and pointing it to the folder you want instead of signing up and configuring a whole new service that most users are not going to have the time or want to set up. Especially because before this push to share what everyone is watching on plex, it was all private anyways.
Being able to browse a multi-TB library from any device is pretty nice. After the PH purge disappeared many of my favourite links overnight I started taking collecting seriously. Also transcoding helps when away from home with a mobile internet connection. Before jellyfin I was using shitty hidden photo album phone apps to hold my collection
Plex for movies and TV. Jellyfin for porn. And never the Twain shall meet
There's stashapp.cc for that
Is there a mobile app for that? Didn't see it mentioned on the page.
I hear it is web only but the site works well on mobile. Has an API that a mobile app could connect to, though.
All for Jellyfin and don't share the porn collection with other users.
It's not like you don't have to set the account yourself anyway.
I'll happily just stick with Kodi. I download all the media I watch to a massive HDD anyway, as I live in Australia, and our internet infrastructure is beyond useless. No accounts, no invasive 'social' features, just my local media library - no streaming required.
Enshittification strikes again.
Streaming is a feature Plex users want though, it’s not a downside. They want to be able to watch on their phone, at their friends house, or share their server with friends and family. Kodi is more for a single HTPC, its use case is fundamentally different.
TIL people have extra space for porn on their Plex servers. I’m surprised because I don’t think I’ve saved any porn since the dialup days because, well, dialup.
deleted
Evidently I already had this disabled.
Yeah me too.
I remember the announcement emails, trying to figure out how to disable it... but not the actual disabling.
Maybe because I haven't bothered updating my server this year :-)
How do you disable this? Not the article nor the comments mention how to opt out...
Article links to 3 different resources on how to disable.
Boomer here. I don't get the point of using Plex.
Let's you stream your pirated shit with a comfortable interface like you'd get from Netflix. Also let's you connect to your techy son's media server to play their pirated stuff. It's controlled by your stuff, so no big tech can remove or see what you're watching.
You can do that yourself. Cut out the middle man. A middle man who's tells everyone what you fap too.
Plex is the odd one out here. They handle authentication and user management with there own servers, while your server just gives those users somewhere to stream media from. This means plex (the company) gets to see all of your and your users activities and everything you've got available on your server.
Both Emby and Jellyfin give you a similar netflix style experience using your own media, but self-hosted without third-party influence. Your users are your own, them and their activity is not visible to anyone else but the server operator (you).
Emby does have a licensing structure for 'Premiere' features, this means they can see how many and which devices connect to your server, but thats it. Jellyfin removes even this leaving things entirely self-hosted.
These solutions make streaming your own media as well as sharing it with friends/family incredibly easy. As easy as just giving out your Hulu/Netflix login. They'll also transcode so you can play highbitrate files on crap Internet without buffering, or allow devices to play files they otherwise wouldn't be able to read (codec/container mismatches).
I mean, I like mounting an SFTP server on my system and playing stuff with MPV just fine, but I host this stuff for my friends, too. Having something like Plex where they can use an interface that's familiar and easily watch what they want is worth it to me.
But then, none of us are watching porn on it, either.
Think of it as a personal Netflix kinda thing. Generally hosted yourself.
Access to any show, movie, or song that you don't pay for? It seems pretty straightforward.
How tf had I never heard of plex before
Crazy
While this is kind of messed up, I have never heard of this feature and don't have any friends on Plex but when I checked my privacy settings they were already set to Private. Additionally the menu says it will automatically revert to private every two years. So it seems like people had to manually share their activity with their friends for this to be an issue.
I got a popup 2 or 3 weeks ago asking what I wanted to share for this and I unchecked everything. Now am curious and will have to go in and verify. Also no email about my week in review or whatever.
Let's just assume that everyone is watching porn.
the trick is to not have friends (on plex)
I grew up on Cinemax because we couldn't afford HBO. Cheesy soft-core porn is my jam and don't you dare judge me!
Are you seriously watching p by yourself?
We used to call it "Skinemax" lol
Any cheesy softcore that involves breast expansion.. asking for a friend, who wants to watch porn with me.
So, obviously this is a very bad thing to happen to Plex; however there is a secret/locked library functionality iirc from using it before.
After asking a friend who's into this stuff about Plex, they said they tried it and it's not worth the trouble of setting up. Thought anyone?
It’s not a 15 minute setup no. However, if you have lots of media and devices, this is really the only thing like it. Yes there are alts, but it’s the same boat.
Definitely like a 15 minute setup on Linux 🤷♂️
I was not talking about just installing the server itself, the whole planning, installing, organizing etc. being more than 15 mins
If you want a decent setup, I'd suggest Radarr (movies) and Sonarr (TV) and a torrent client to get started. Three packages, and they can all run in Docker containers.
I have a decent setup and I don’t use any of that. No need for that when I’m using discs as my sources vs downloads.
That's not a decent setup; that's an awesome setup! Just not as beginner-friendly IMO.
Thanks. Remember, Plex is for YOUR media, so you know, I feel ripping is part of the basics of getting things setup and going.
As a note to other readers: I still rip everything manually because something at some point breaks an automated process and it has to be done manually anyway….so I just do it all manually these days. Takes less time, and when I have done my library over again (a few times) I still did it all manually.
What quality/format do you rip to?
CDs are ripped bit for bit into wav files
DVDs have subtitles retained but I don’t compress after MakeMKV.
BDs have subtitles retained but then I run through handbrake and do h265 compression, keep it all as mkv files.
Good stuff!
I see, so you just store the CDs raw? Are you like an audiophile with super equipment and all that? 🙂
And you listen (only?) from Plex on all your devices, or no?
Yeah I store the CDs raw. I have enough storage on my phone that I can load up from PlexAmp. I do a lot of offline listening so I love the download options and I usually stream my whole library from my server over WiFi.
I have a good amount of video downloaded in the main Plex app, workout vids, a few movies and whatever series I’m watching. All works out pretty well.
What are you planning and organizing? I just make a folder "series" and one "movies", dump all the respective content in those, start the scan and start watching. 🤷♂️
I bought dedicated hardware and shucked a lot of drives to get all the storage I needed. I modded and old case to put this in, added a couple of blu ray drives for ripping my media. Also I needed to update music brainz because it had incorrect or non existent data.
I had an initial server that was quick and dirty and was great, but I needed it to handle all of my media and it does pretty well. Always can use more storage because I’m constantly buying media on discs.
Ah okay, I see. I have two drives adding up to 14 TB that I store everything on, in my main PC. (Looking to change this with a NAS or something.)
And eh... We have different ways of acquiring media, we could say. 🙂 And probably different storage needs due to that as well.
But yeah, it makes sense that it is more than 15 minutes if you include all that. But installing and setting up the storages in Plex and stuff, not a huge task, which is nice.
I’m always getting media in a number of ways. Source rips and downloads are the best vs what’s available to the general public. I’m ok with what I’ve got going on.
Sounds awesome, friend. Keep building that library!
For me its less than that on both Linux and windows. Unless things have changed when I ran windows it was a exe file you just double clicked on to set up. If you have the bamining schemes correct and the way Plex has you set it up is the same its qui k
Honestly I never had to do anything about naming schemes either. Just make a folder "movies" and one "series", dump all the respective content in each of those and start the scan and start watching. "Borrowed" content from the internet just works, no problem. 🤷♂️
Should all be done within 15 minutes easy.
Just in case anyone is looking to have their adult content streamable but kept separate from Plex/Jellyfish etc check out Stash, really easy to spin up a container. Works well, bit rough around the edges though.
sticky situation
I've never heard of Plex until now, what kind of porn does it actually have? I can't imagine it being any different from Netflix unless they allow some really "hardcore" stuff.
It's designed to serve media you download. So it has whatever you've acquired.
Oh neat. I won't have to keep it all on my various devices sweet.
Try Jellyfin or Kodi instead
Anyone know if the jellyfin issues with subtitles getting offset from video ever got fixed?
Oh is that a known issue? I had it happen for the first time yesterday. Had to reload the page, but it fixed it.
It hasn't been fixed to my knowledge but it seems to be happening to be far less frequently, I wouldn't exactly call it hot garbage like the other commenter
That's also a thing in Plex sometimes if I fast forward sometimes
Nope. And all of jellyfins other debilitating bugs are present still too. Still hot garbage.
Debilitating? I dunno, I don't do anything too advanced with it but it plays my BluRay rips fine.
It often stops working when I try to scrub too much. Fast forwarding goes too far (randomly multiples) on Android (Google TV) and Firefox. Subtitles just do not sync, no matter what I try. I'm really lucky to get a movie with good subtitles. It can't fetch metadata while a VPN is active. Jellyfin is garbage and I maintain that.
What the usual cost of small plex server? (1000 movies + tv shows+anime combined)
Where my a4k dawgs at?
How much does it cost to Pirate instead and not have to worry about this stupid fucking shit?
That's not a real question. If you can't tell. ARGH!
ARGH! 😂🤡
So angry. 🤡
You read emotionis in text. You and pretty much the rest of what you chased me around with sum YOUR persona: 0 or an entire lackthereof.
"ARGH!"
🤣🤡
Go play with a closed source AI.
Is this any different than server admins using Tautulli? I'd assume so, since it's happening for users with multiple servers.
Privacy issues aside, who is using Plex for porn? There's many better options tailored to that type of content specifically. I'm not sure what benefit you'd get from using Plex for porn.
Weird, the hate here for that feature is crazy! I remember recommending something similar to this as a feature to emby years ago, but instead, it would be a home screen category where it lists the most recently watched content of your other users. They said they liked it but, of course, never got around to doing anything with that.
I guess I am shocked that any kind of porn would be added to these kinds of libraries at all. As the admin of my emby library, I share it is strictly tv and movies. If I want to setup something local to use, then I have Kodi for that or just stream sites? Just the thought of adding that content and trying to keep it private sounds like too much stress.
Also, as the admin, I see everything my friends watch anyway, which I would assume is the same on plex? Sure, it's not everyone knowing what everyone is watching, but someone still can see your activity.
The only thing I agree on is that the feature should have been added as disabled, but at least they are adding unique features. It's probably getting harder trying to figure out what else to add or do these days.
All I see is one giant reason not to watch porn.
I have an ad blocking DNS server on my network that blocks porn sites for all my roommates.
Wow, such a noble hero! /s