cross-posted from: https://sopuli.xyz/post/6329982

“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.”

  • EeeDawg101@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    44
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    11 months ago

    This kind of stuff is just another reason that reinforces my decision to switch from Plex to Jellyfin. Plex is just adding way too much bloat and unnecessary features.

    • dohpaz42@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      I just started self-hosting a media center for myself, and I am so relieved that I chose jellyfin.

        • spizzat2@kbin.social
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          3
          ·
          11 months ago

          How difficult was the transition? I assume you don’t have to convert your media. Is it basically just setting up Jellyfin and pointing to the existing data? Is it possible to use both services simultaneously from the same multimedia location (e.g. as a transitional period)?

          • D_Air1@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            5
            ·
            edit-2
            11 months ago

            Not too difficult. Yeah just set it up and point at the existing folder with all the media and let it go to work. It wasn’t my first time experimenting with the both of them and yes you can run both at the same time. I did run both at one point in the past before settling on plex. I just had to download jellyfin and set it back up. One thing that I recommend doing with the both of them is to make sure that both of them only have read access to the actual media. Do this at the OS level. That way there are no accidents that effect the actual media on disk.

          • arglebargle@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            3
            ·
            11 months ago

            I had plex for a decade or more, but I added Jellyfin last year. They both are running on the same server and point to the same media stack. No problem.

            In general, I prefer Jellyfin. Now I prefer it even more.

  • billbasher@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    11 months ago

    There is an option not to share browsing history with friends. I have it turned off and I didn’t get this email nor did my friends.

    It really sucks that it is opt out, though.

    • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      I turned it off on the initial notification about the feature yet still got the Week in Review email along with seeing who’s watched what on each library item.

  • anytimesoon@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    11 months ago

    Copied from a reddit comment to save others a click through:

    Just to make this slightly easier to find. You can opt out of the settings with the following:

    Go to https://app.plex.tv/desktop/#!/profile/edit
    
    Click on "Privacy Settings" at the bottom of the page
    
    Dialog pops up where you can change stuff to private
    

    The longer version is as follows, if you want to find the setting more organically:

    Go to https://app.plex.tv/
    
    Find "Discover" in the left hand bar, either it's pinned or under "More" -> "Plex" -> "Discover"
    
    Click "Edit Profile" button
    
    Click on "Privacy Settings" at the bottom of the page
    
    Dialog pops up where you can change stuff to private
    
    • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      This lets you disable like three things out of a list of about 25.

      Turns out I was viewing the other privacy page about sharing info with plex.

      However, altering this setting does not stop you from getting notifications in the app as well as a “week in review” email about people using your server. I realize you can view watch history with Tautulli, but you have to actively seek this out rather than having it forced upon you. You should be able to disable this from your server completely.

  • transmatrix@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    11 months ago

    I don’t understand how this happens. When they added this feature, it walks you through what is shared and who it is shared with. I made all my shit private. I mean, I’m annoyed the default was to share it all, but it’s not like the first notification of this feature was the email about watch history.

    • phiresky@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      ·
      edit-2
      11 months ago

      I can understand not having the energy to care about long messages from companies enough to notice stuff like this. Everyone is forced to look at tons of text / media from companies every day demanding your attention, “news” about stuff to get you to spend more time with company products, mixed in with ads, fake “updates” just for you personally to trigger reactions in your brain that make you feel like something social is happening. So many buttons you get shown about agreeing to something or acknowledging something or some terms you’ve never read having changed vaguely with “we care about you”, intentionally obfuscating which ones you’re legally allowed to deny and which ones are going to be forced down your throat in any case.

      They added this feature as an opt-out in order to capitalize on your existing relationship with your friends to redirect that social attention to their corporate interests. I’m happy there’s backlash, regardless of whether a user could have theoretically stopped it.

      • transmatrix@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        It forces you to review the share settings when you log in for the first time. I just encountered it on my Wife’s account. It’s not like they just sent an email saying “check your settings.” Again, I get the frustration with opt-out, I’m annoyed, too. However, people are definitely overreacting.

    • Fribbtastic@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      11 months ago

      I am pretty sure I have disabled this as well but I am not sure about the “set everything to private”. I know I have seen this recently but I cannot find it anywhere so it isn’t that easy to find, at least for me right now.

      On the other hand, even if I would set that family and friends could see my watch history, I would still have to have some assumptions about what is shared and what is not and how that is being accessed. There is a huge difference between “they can see everything that I have watched regardless of whether they have access to the library or not” and, more importantly getting notified about what I have watched or they have to go to some UI element or browser to see what a user has played.

  • const_void@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    ·
    11 months ago

    Time to transition my users to Jellyfin. Can I get a refund for my lifetime subscription?

  • hakunawazo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    11 months ago

    “cheesy, soft porn stuff”
    Of all the possibilities, this seems to be the best case. Imagine being made fun of because you’re so boring.

    • MorrisonMotel6@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      11 months ago

      Uh, my wife and I? I have porn on my server, which is not shared with any other people who have access. Not that anyone would care that my wife and I watch porn in our house on our server, but I think we’d both prefer plex didn’t email that to my parents and adult child once a month

        • MorrisonMotel6@lemm.ee
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          11 months ago

          Sure, we used to do that, but huddling around a computer when we were watching kind of got in the way and added an unnecessary barrier. Flipping though the plex UI with the remote works a lot better and has fewer logistical concerns for us

    • Chup@feddit.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      11 months ago

      It’s just a bait title, further down they write about ‘softcore porn’. Isn’t that used in the USA for erotic scenes and nudity in movies? Depending on the state, it could even be Dirty Dancing or other romantic movies in their playlist.

      • CmdrShepard@lemmy.one
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        Any video that has a listing on TMDB would be exposed and I’m sure they have more than a few adult titles in their database.