cross-posted from: https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/post/2333639
I was just forwarded this someone in my household who watches our server. That’s it folks. I’ve been a hold out for a long time, but this is honestly it.
They want me to pay to stream content that I bought from my hardware transcoded also on my hardware.
I’ll say it. As of today, I say Plex is dead. Luckily I’ve been setting up Jellyfin, I guess it’s time to make it production ready.
Edit: I have a Plex Pass. More comments saying “Just buy a plex pass” are seriously not getting it. I have a Plex Pass and my users are still getting this.
And for the thousandth person who wants to say the same things to me:
- YES I know I’m unaffected as a Plex Pass owner.
- My users were immediately angry at it, which made me angry. Our users don’t understand what plex pass is, and they shouldn’t have to, that’s why I had it. The fact that they were pinged even though it should have kept working is horribly sloppy
- Plex is still removing functionality. I don’t care that “People should pay their fair share”. If Plex wants to put every new feature behind a paywall, that’s completely okay. They are removing functionality.
- “But they have cloud costs”. Remote streaming is negligible to them. It’s a dynamic DNS service. Plex client logs in, asks where server is, plex cloud responds with the IP and port of where server is located. That’s it.
- “Good luck finding another remote streaming” - Again, Plex just opens up an IP and port. Jellyfin also just opens up an IP and port (Hold on jellyfin folks I know, security, that’s a separate conversation). All “remote streaming” is is their dynamic dns. Literal pennies to them. Know what actually is costing them money? Hosting all of that ad-supported “free” content that they’re probably losing money on.
In short, I don’t care how you justify it. Plex is doing something shitty. They’re removing functionality that has been free for years. I’m not responding to any more of your comments repeating the same arguments over and over.
I don’t see this talked about much anymore, but the day Plex added telemetry in 2017 was the day I became five-alarm desperate for an alternative. Had to wait a 2-3 years with Plex’s telemetry IP’s and domains blacklisted before Jellyfin was mature enough for me to make the change.
How Plex users can be comfortable with any telemetry is beyond me.
I started on Plex and even considered a lifetime Plex pass, but I felt like it was more interested in showing their content than my content. It was a lot of effort just to show music and movies.
My family and I use jellyfin every day now, and a key thing is it starts off boring but it shows your music, your movies, your books, your photos.
For folks who migrate who were paying, consider a donation to projects you make heavy use of. They don’t usually have big companies behind them and can use the help.
Your users are getting that because they have a plex account that they use to stream. They might stream from just you, but they could stream from any other shared server they’re connect to. That’s why they get this email.
If you have a plex pass and are a server owner, they can ignore this and keep streaming from you for free.
If they try to stream from a server owner who does not have plex pass, it won’t work unless the user themselves have a plex watch pass, which let’s them stream from any server that doesn’t have plex pass.
Since you have plex pass, your users won’t be impacted at all.
ITT:
I’ve been a lifetime Plex pass holder since forever. And that even covers my brother accessing the server? He doesn’t even need one?
Seems fair to me for a platform I use daily for a decade.
Correct, only the server owner needs the pass.
This has caused a lot of controversy because it was a free feature since Plex started and they’re now locking it behind a subscription.
I don’t know if you’re trying to exclaim that it doesn’t cover it, or that it’s a fair thing.
I’m a Plex pass holder on my server - and my user does not have a plex pass. From what I’m reading they need to pay a subscription to access my (Plex pass) server.
That isn’t true. A Plex pass from the server owner will cover access for all users
What do you want me to say? I hold a plex pass. I’m the server owner. My users are receiving that email.
Yes, they’re being advertised to. In theory this is because they might be clients for non-Pass servers in addition to yours. In practice, Plex could easily verify Plex client accounts that don’t run a server or have access to non-Pass servers and skip sending this marketing email to those accounts. What they’re doing is trying to convince your users they need to pay a sub fee (even though they don’t), because it’s free money in Plex’s pocket if the users do click the thing and say “welp, still cheaper than netflix”
If that’s the case, then best case they’re being incredbily scummy and my users are getting lied to. Of which, I won’t just let them pay monthly for something they don’t need.
It’s scummy advertising, yes. Designed to prey on a Plex server operator’s likely-less-tech-literate users.
And that should be enough right there to get all server owners to drop Plex
They likely streamed from some other Plex server in the past, and that’s why they’re getting the email. The email specifically states that if the server owner has a plex pass, you don’t need one.
I got the email earlier today and it couldn’t be clearer:
As a server owner, if you elect to upgrade to a Plex Pass, anyone with access to your server can continue streaming your server content remotely as part of your subscription benefits.
I know for a fact that minimum one of them has not, the second email I would be extremely surprised if they had.
Their email and even their “Plex: Free vs Paid” page is confusing. However, the “Requirements for Remote Playback of Personal Media“ is more clear.
I do not have a Plex Pass, but I stream remotely from a Plex Media Server
To stream video remotely from a Plex Media Server, you will need either a Remote Watch Pass or Plex Pass subscription on your account or the admin of the Plex Media Server from which you stream will need a Plex Pass subscription on their account.
Yes, that is correct. It’s because the people that read the email only, or read the email and click one (1) link, are likely to be less familiar with Plex as a platform than the server owner. Plex the company would very much like people to pay them $7 a month forever for literally nothing.
Yeah if you already have a lifetime pass then essentially nothing changes. They also did the right thing about giving people a pretty good heads up to purchase a lifetime pass before they raised the price.
Your users may have gotten the notice (my family didn’t) but they can ignore it if the server owner has a lifetime pass.
Read the email again. The key word in their marketing slop is “alternatively”. You have a Plex Pass and are the server admin. Your users need to do nothing.
Unfortunately, that does mean I have to respond to messages from all my users asking what that email means and convince them they can just ignore it.
A second “nice” part of this change is that iOS users no longer have to buy the Plex app on the App Store to stream longer than a minute. The app is only like 5 bucks one time, but it was a barrier when trying to convince stubborn people to just fucking TRY my Plex server.
Indeed. The entitlement that some folks online have towards Plex is embarrassing sometimes.
I am also a Plex pass person. Multiple times over in fact. I actually have a dedicated account for my server administrator that’s separate from the account I use to watch content. Both have Plex pass lifetime.
I’ve been familiar with this coming down the pipeline for a while and because I have Plex pass, I too, am unaffected, as are my users.
At the same time: here is a piece of software that I paid for. It’s “server” software, sure, but it’s just a software package. What it does isn’t really relevant. The fact is that it processes data stored on my systems, processing by my systems, using my hardware, and sends that data over the Internet, using the Internet connection I pay for separately, and delivers that data directly to the people I’ve designated as capable of doing so.
The only part of this process that Plex, the company, has any involvement in, is limited to: issuing an SSL certificate, managing user accounts and passwords, and brokering where to find data (pointers to my systems).
You can get a free SSL certificate from let’s encrypt. User accounts, authentication, authorization, and accounting (AAA), is a function of pretty much everything that you remotely connect to, whether a Windows SMB/cifs share, your email, even logging into your own local computer regardless of OS… And honestly, brokering the connection isn’t dissimilar to how torrent trackers work, DNS or a goddamned IP address punched into a browser.
They’re offering shockingly little for what they’re asking, and the only thing that’s on the list that would be costly in the slightest is having a DNS name for the server (registration of the domain, DNS services, etc). And given the scale that they’re doing these things at, the individual costs per name is literally pennies per year.
This is not a good look at all.
I have domain names coming out of my ears. I’m tempted to buy one more and just offer to anyone that wants it, to have a subdomain name under that to run their Plex alternative on, so you can get a let’s encrypt SSL certificate, and stay safe on the Internet. I don’t want the feds snooping into what totally legal Linux ISOs are being shared.
I just don’t know how to program at all, so I have no idea how I would go about setting up a system for that. The concept would be to automate it, and have people create an account, then request a DNS name under one of my DNS domains, and have a setting if you want it to have an A record, AAAA record, or cname (if you have a ddns setup). Once the request is in, it would connect to be DNS provider and add the record for you.
The part I’d want to have as a check on the system is to make sure that you’re hosting jellyfin or something from the address you submit, to prevent people from using it for unrelated purposes; but even with that… Do I care of people do that? Probably not. I would limit how many addresses you can have per account.
Jellyfin. I’ve been waiting for Plex to do this for years. Enshitification is everywhere.
As long as the library owner has a Plex Pass nothing changes for ANYONE who is streaming from that Plex Server.
Enshittification engaged. /j
Friendship ended with plex, jellyfin is new best friend.
Welcome to jellyfin!
So let me get this straight: you own the content, you host the content on your machine, you pay the electricity and internet and plex says it can’t afford to let you share it to others without a subscription fee?
I mean making plex a one time fee if it’s good turnkey solution is fine but subscription…
not a plex user but someone burried the lede here… to me, this is the neon sign that says GTFO:
we noticed that you’ve accessed libraries in the past
what business of yours is it to notice my private comings and goings?! what other actionable intel do y’all keep in your logs?! bye!
I see some posts taking about jellyfin and tailscale and I find it interesting that it’s not mentioned tailscale is a private company. Why are they not being held to the same standard as Plex? How long before it becomes enshittified? I saw they have a free plan but give it time until they realize the number of users in the free tier are large enough to monetize. edit: I’m prepared to be down voted but mark this and see where it at.
I switched to Jellyfin recently and I mostly prefer it over Plex, except for lack of organization tools and the goddamn roulette wheel that is seeking. Why is it that seeking defaults to 30 second intervals, requires a click to confirm, and occasionally just jumps to some random point near the beginning of the file? Great software overall, but it’s wild to me that this basic playback functionality is so hit or miss.
