“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.”

    • Winter8593@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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.

      • Gabagoolzoo@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        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.

        • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          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.

          • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
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            11 months ago

            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.

          • Winter8593@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            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.

      • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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        11 months ago

        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.

        • drudoo@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          I have two main issues:

          1. 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.

          2. 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.

              • huskypenguin@sh.itjust.works
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                11 months ago

                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.

          • webghost0101@sopuli.xyz
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            11 months ago

            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.

      • IronKrill@lemmy.ca
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        11 months ago

        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.

      • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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        11 months ago

        One feature I enjoy is hardware acceleration without paying for it

              • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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                11 months ago

                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:

                Converting the video (transcoding) happens automatically, in real-time, while you’re playing it. Using the free, software-based transcoding in Plex Media Server, home computers can seamlessly convert and stream video in real-time to any Plex app. Some computers with more powerful processors can even stream multiple videos at once, especially at lower qualities.

                To convert videos faster and with less processing power, you can turn on Hardware-Accelerated Streaming in Plex Media Server. When hardware acceleration is turned on, Plex Media Server will use the dedicated video decoder and encoder hardware support in your computer/device to convert videos, letting you stream HD or 4K video more smoothly and stream to more devices at once. And if you use the same computer for both work and play, hardware acceleration uses less processing power during video streaming, giving you back the speed you need for your other activities.

                By offloading CPU-intensive transcoding tasks to dedicated hardware, video streaming has less of a performance impact on your computer.

                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.

    • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      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

            • TrickDacy@lemmy.world
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              11 months ago

              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

              • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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                11 months ago

                What do you mean? I don’t think there’s much at all of maintenance needed to be done.

                • AtariDump@lemmy.world
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                  11 months ago

                  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.

                  • Kusimulkku@lemm.ee
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                    11 months ago

                    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.

      • Gabagoolzoo@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        Caddy makes it a breeze. Just get a domain name, add an A record for your IP and put in this one line:

        caddy reverse-proxy --from example.com --to 127.0.0.1:8096

        Just like that, remote access over HTTPS.

        • Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          It’s not even really difficult to do it the manual way and completely free. DuckDNS supports Let’s Encrypt DNS challenges now and it’s fairly easy to do. No paying for your own domain name.

      • stown@sedd.it
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        11 months ago

        I’ve never tried installing Jellyfin but I am curious as to what makes it a pain for remote access. With Plex I just set my reverse proxy to point at the internal IP and port and I’m good to go. I assumed it would be the same with Jellyfin.

        • Lem453@lemmy.ca
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          11 months ago

          It’s can be exactly this with jellyfin as well. The minimal setup with no https is just that, run app, open port on router and port forward. If you want https it requires messing with certs manually or using a reverse proxy.

          Plex can take care of the login for you by using their own servers to log you in. Non technical users will of course find this easier to use but now Plex has data on all your users and logins and possibly viewing habits as well. Proponents of self hosting and open source don’t like that aspect of Plex.

          I personally think Plex will continue to add features that make it more attractive for someone like Netflix to buy. Those features are generally the opposite of what self hosted users actually want.

          Plex has been around for a long time and has a decent amount of funding so they have better client apps. Jellyfin is catching up fast.

          I’ve used my setup with web browsers, Android, iOS and it’s been very solid.

          • Evilcoleslaw@lemmy.world
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            11 months ago

            but now Plex has data on all your users and logins and possibly viewing habits as well.

            They absolutely have that. Plus they’ll ban your server just if they don’t like where you’re hosting it. I’ve also seen a few reports of them banning users hosting using residential connections sharing with a handful of friends and family, followed up with sending all the users emails informing them that the host was running a commercial piracy operation.

          • stown@sedd.it
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            11 months ago

            I guess call me an idiot because I didn’t know you could log into your Plex server from the official Plex site. I’v always gone the complete self-hosted route.

          • code@lemmy.zip
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            11 months ago

            Jellyfin wont get traction until thier apps on things like apple tv , roku etc work well. Ive been running it alongside plex for years and its still not there