As you may have seen Plex decided it was OK today to send an email showing me what my friends have been watching. To be clear, this is Plex telling other people what I’ve been watching from my server, with my files, and this is not OK.

https://imgur.com/a/DYR4wlh

We all knew it was a matter of time before Plex started collecting data on our libraries and sharing it with advertisers. What happened to their “we don’t know, and don’t want to know, what is on your server”?. This, for me, is proof that those fears were absolutely founded in reality. On what planet would I ever want this information to be shared with friends on family on an OPT OUT basis?

It’s totally unacceptable to collect this data in the first place. It’s totally unacceptable to share this information with uniquely identifiable information. And it’s totally unacceptable to do this without explicitly asking me if it’s OK.

Unfortunately there is nothing you can do about this as a server admin, because technically these are Plex users and their marketing email preferences are controlled on the user side in the Plex website preferences. Not on your server.

This is an absolutely egregious overreach.

Thank goodness there are alternatives available in the form of Jellyfin and Emby. I left my Plex server up after the Jellyfin January challenge we did on the Self-Hosted podcast but because of this I feel that I have no choice but to take it down for good.

  • levogevo@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    Not sure about if Samsung TV has Google play store where the jellyfin or infuse app exist, but you can do chromecast / airplay if not Google play store

    • Big-Finding2976@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Definitely no Play Store on his TV. I don’t think it has any Chromecast /Airplay apps either, but even if it does I don’t think they’re any substitute for Plex or Jellyfin.

    • Znuffie@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Samsung TVs run Tizen OS, not Android TV, so obviously no “Google Play Store”.

      Also apps are pretty restricted, most are just able to use web-technologies, so nothing heavy-handed.

      The process in getting TV Apps approved on platforms like Samsung’s Tizen OS is pretty annoying for most developers/open-source stuff.

      There is an actual app for Tizen TVs, but it needs to be sideloaded manually: https://github.com/jeppevinkel/jellyfin-tizen-builds