from CallMeAl@piefed.zip to selfhosted@lemmy.world on 26 May 04:10
https://piefed.zip/c/selfhosted/p/1526968/is-plex-really-self-hosting
I’ve been thinking about this more and more. According to the sidebar, this community is “A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.” Based on that I don’t think Plex qualifies.
Privacy: Plex clearly records the metadata of what you watch. When I used it, it would send me a report by email of what my “friends” were watching. Even with that turned off, their services still track telemetry.
Control: Plex has all of it. They can (and do) make unilateral changes to the service, how authentication works, where you can run it, etc.
So I ask, when you are hosting something that is entirely dependent on a commercial entity to function, is Plex really selfhosting in the spirit of this community?
threaded - newest
Big fat NO
Nope, but people are defensive of their financial decisions.
Apparently people are defensive about other people’s financial decisions too.
xd
Made me chuckle. Indeed, you do have a point.
By that definition, no. But the Threadiverse is small enough, that I would allow it. Plex follows a similar spirit, but enshittified over the years.
I use Jellyfin btw.
I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules for what is self hosting. Lots of people use cloudflare, which would fail both of your criteria as well.
At least with Plex/cloudflare/others, your overall control and privacy is better and more in your control than it would be with other non-self hosted alternatives.
I specifically asked about the criteria from this community’s own sidebar because that’s what I’m interested, what is self hosting “in the spirit of this community?”
Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like your reply ignores my actual question for discussion.
The description of this community is not a hard rule written in stone, and I would treat it as more of a vibe than a criteria.
If you want to take it literally, then yes, Plex doesn’t count, neither does cloudflare or wordpress. And many other proprietary systems commonly used by the self hosting community.
But I think the spirit of this community is a bit more loose, and there is room for the likes of Plex.
Plex specifically is the worst of both though. You have to host all of your own data, and pay Plex for the privilege, but they maintain control of virtually everything you can do with it.
100% agree. Well said.
To me, self hosting means the service runs on your hardware and is entirely un-reliant on anyone else’s.
So no image pull from docker.io, right?
I'm guessing you coded your own OS that isn't dependent on updates from repositories you don't control?
Convenient you left out the context where it clearly means “the service is un-reliant on anyone else’s hardware to run”. It clearly doesn’t mean un-reliant on anyone, anywhere.
As long as you’re running it on your own hardware, it sure is.
Sure, that doesn’t really have anything to do with self-hosting, though.
They have no control at all over the contents of your media library. Even if they shut down everything, all your media is still there. They merely have control over a user interface that can be replaced.
If you have no control over it, that means plex isnt self hosted. The data is self hosted, but not the interface which is all that plex is at the end. You are basically just donating your hardware and data to a shitty company at that point.
It software hosted on hardware I physically control. That’s self-hosting.
Controlling the software is an integral part of the ethos of self hosting. Literally right in the first sentence of the wikipedia page.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hosting_(network)
Plex is outside of the administrators control.
That’s funny, because I’m pretty sure I installed it and I also have the power to uninstall it. Seems like control to me.
Anyway, I really have no interest in arguing with elitist takes that are objectively wrong.
If it’s just about installing a program and bring able to uninstall it, that would mean that if Netflix made a program you could install, you’re now self hosting Netflix.
Well, that depends on what type of software netflix would make available. If it’s just a client application, that doesn’t really qualify as self-hosting, since it’s a client and not a server. That’s basically just using an app on any device.
But if you could install the netflix server side software and connect it to your own media library and access it with your own local clients, then you’d be literally self-hosting netflix, indeed.
Ah, but I control if the client application is installed or not. And technically Netflix did allow downloading content for offline viewing - as long as you had an account (don’t know if they still do).
Now both the content and the application are on your hardware. Ergo by your logic, that would be self hosting.
I mean … if you somehow can also download all the content, yeah. You’re literally be self hosting netflix. Their content library is probably the more important part to their business model than the software … What is your point?
You don't control the Netflix server, AT ALL. How is this hard to comprehend?
You don’t control Plex’s remote authentication servers at all, either, how is this hard to comprehend?
That’s why nobody is self-hosting Plex’s authentication server, they’re hosting the Plex Media Server. I think you’re getting confused.
I’m self hosting Microsoft Office right now
(I know you’re just joking)
☝️🤓, We typically don’t consider local-only applications as being hosted.
Hosted implies a server and the ability to operate remotely and to service multiple users.
Oh, good point. I’ll have to get some RDP CAL licenses or something.
The purist part of my head wants to define self hosting as something done on your own hardware that no actor external to your net can influence directly, even to the point of requiring a licence check against an outside server is not ‘self hosted’.
By that definition it gets a bit dicey with a lot of projects that are at all complex though, so you have to decide your own line.
It also starts to depend on how you define what a given service actually is. Plex has shifted from being a self hosted media server to essentially a streaming service that you can hook your own library to.
… well, at some point any hobby grows to the point where purists show up.
There’s give and take with everything. Is it “self” hosted if you rely on Docker - a 3rd party with control over their own infrastructure? Or hosting it on a Debian OS? Is it really “private” if it’s connected to the internet at all?
Are you running the Plex Server application on some hardware so other devices can access the library? Hey, that’s self-hosting. That’s it.
I guess I’m not selfhosting at all, I use a power grid that I don’t control.
Have you mined the minerals though?
Or to put it in another way “to truly selfhost you need to start by creating the universe”.
.
It’s not truly self hosting unless you start by creating the universe.
Edit: Balls, @gedfromgont@piefed.ca beat me to it. That’ll teach me to riff on Sagan quotes before I scroll down in the thread.
I agree that it doesn't fit the definition in the sidebar, and I don't use it because of those issues. If I'm self-hosting something, it's precisely because I don't want to be sharing data with a company (whether it be my photos or an inventory of my media library) or because I want more control than an external service provides.
That said, most stuff we self-host isn't going to be completely independent, e.g. if you're running anything with HTTPS, you'll need Let's Encrypt or another way of obtaining a valid cert (unless you want to get into the habit of allowing exceptions in your browser, which is not a good idea).
In the strictest sense, Plex does qualify as self-hosting (you're running the application on hardware you manage along with your own media library) - but I'd argue that the compromises it requires are not ones every one is willing to agree to.
I don’t really get hung up on the nomenclature and definitions. If you run your services off of a VPS and call it selfhosting, more power to you. No skin off my nose. If you run your services off of a homelab rack that dims the lights whenever you power it on and you call it selfhosting, more power to you. If you’re running your services off of an old repurposed, disposable vape unit, and you call it selfhosting, git sum. It’s a big umbrella and we can all coexist without nitpicking each other. Gatekeeping is something I don’t do, and it gets tiresome to hear others regurgitate the same trope over and over again.
ETA: @CallMeAl@piefed.zip, nice profile shot.
If you are in this situation, then you definetly should get some more power, or at least a UPS to make sure you don’t trip a breaker.
Ooohhhhh, now I get it.
My first thought was dimming the lights like when a movie starts and that seemed silly.
Hey if you like a more intimate setting when you’re with your server, far be it from me to interfere. Throw on a little Barry White and some Ottis Redding and git sum.
@irmadlad This is such a great idea. I sometimes tell my rack, “you are my everything” and I give it whatever it wants. I’m about to reposition some of the equipment. That is plenty intimate enough to play Barry White.
Bow Chicka Wow Wow
Also make sure you don’t have a loose neutral somewhere 😬
It was a whimsical exaggeration.
... Taken to it's logical conclusion and combined with snarky, but mildly helpful, advice.
As is tradition.
Yeah this is where I am at too, it’s more about who is responsible when it breaks for me and if Plex breaks I have to fix it no matter where it runs. This community is more about learning how to do it than what specific tools to use for me as well, all tools come and go over a long enough timeframe, this is a good place to learn about the next one.
The gates hath been declared open!
Back in the late 60s, I heard a song by Jimi Hendrix called ‘If A 6 Were 9’. One line has stuck with me for decades and I’ve pretty much lived my life this way:
Achtually, if the lights dim less power to him.
No, no, he needs more power if the lights are dimming! That means the servers are hungry!
It's why I also consider cloudflare against the spirit of the community but I'm not going to give anyone hell over doing things how they want to with their own stuff. Freedom to do things as we'd like is part of the reason why we're all here, right?
100% and the mods are also pretty good about removing off topic posts. My question is about understanding what this community thinks and where that line to what is off topic is. There are certainly things you can do with a server at home that would be off topic for this community, right?
I don’t want to hear about hosting CSM but anything else is fair game imo
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
[Thread #317 for this comm, first seen 26th May 2026, 11:50] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
It’s like a baby step on the self hosting journey. Not as pure as Jellyfin but still a little better than Netflix. I paid for a Plex lifetime pass years ago, when they were still producing cool updates like DVR functionality for OTA broadcasts. I still run it but now Jellyfin is running alongside it with the intent of dropping Plex soon.
Plex requires a Plex Pass subscription to share outside of your local network. Plex doesn’t allow you to watch media on your local network if your internet service is down, even if you have the Pass, because the service requires a constant connection to the Plex service itself. You can’t use apps on most streaming boxes and sticks without a Pass subscription. Plex records telemetry on all of your viewing habits and shares it with any of your associates who also use the service.
I switched from Plex to Emby a decade ago because of the restriction on local network streaming without an internet connection. My internet service went down and I said to myself “well I can at least watch my locally hosted files on my tv sitting next to the server”. Nope, not allowed. I emailed Plex support about it once my internet was back and they said that wasn’t a bug, it was by design. I dropped it then and there even though I had a lifetime Pass subscription.
It actually does, you can whitelist local IP addresses, allowing them to bypass plex auth servers.
Good to know, and it would have been nice if that support rep had just told me that ten years ago instead of inadvertently talking me into dropping the service altogether. Hell, it would have been nice if that was in the documentation, but obviously they have a vested interest in mining your data.
Still, for all of the reasons above and more, I’ll never use Plex again. I occasionally help a friend keep his Plex installation maintained and it’s just a shitty service compared to the more open options in my experience. I’ve told him about the better options but his sunk cost mindset (he paid the current lifetime fee) won’t let him migrate.
Its been in the docs for at least 7 years now (check the Last Modified date).
Well that’s good at least!
Does that mean you could theoretically get all setup and pull the internet plug for your Plex server and just let it run only locally?
(I haven’t used Plex since about 2012)
I think so but it wouldn’t be able to get all the metadata for any new content you add so probably wouldn’t be a great idea
Yes. This has always been possible.
And my experience was nearly ten years ago. I’m glad they updated the documentation. Thanks for the link!
This is incorrect and parroted constantly. It almost feels intentional.
Why would I lie? It was my experience at the time, if it has changed for the better since then, that’s great for Plex users.
If not a lie, you were simply misinformed. Hopefully you will no longer be
I’ll say it again: it was my experience at the time, ten years ago. There is no misinformation. Apparently the situation has changed for the better for Plex users and that’s great. But I’m not going to change what I said, because it was what I experienced; to do so would be misinformation.
The difference between “this is true” and “this was true ten years ago” is huge.
Presenting one as the other is why you’re being challenged
I never misrepresented anything. I spoke of my experience, and when I was told the situation had changed I was clear in several comments that I was happy it is now better for current users. You are talking as if I am intentionally misleading people when it’s clear that I am not. Why are you doing that?
I didn’t suggest you did it intentionally.
I am suggesting that you are being challenged by others because your sentence as written and without the context of the other comments is incorrect, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
Well, grammatical quibble then.
Your verbs are present tense and not past tense:
This gives the impression that you’re talking about the current state of things. Which seems to be the above commenter’s issue.
Where as:
or
Would imply a past experience.
Misinformation doesn’t mean that you’re intentionally lying (that is disinformation), it just means that you’re stating facts that are not true.
(I’m not being negative, just pedantic lol)
To actually contribute to the conversation:
Plex now allows local network streaming without their servers being offline as long as your client is already authenticated (cached tokens have a short expiration date however)
Alternatively, you can add your LAN’s subnet in Settings > Server > Network > ‘List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth’
Here’s a full written guide: forums.plex.tv/t/…/383325
I was clear in other comments that I was speaking of what I knew to be true at the time, therefore the tense was correct from my perspective. I was told that the situation changed about seven years ago, I acknowledged this and expressed happiness for current Plex users, and then came several different people piling on telling me I’m lying, I’m wrong, I’m misleading, even after I stated that my experience was ten years ago and I acknowledged that things had changed since then.
To be abundantly clear, from my point of view before I was corrected, the present tense was correct based on my experience. I acknowledged the corrections and was still accused of lying and misrepresenting. I just don’t get that. I don’t understand why immediately acknowledging and accepting and even expressing genuine happiness that the situation has changed leads to attacks from all sides. I don’t understand why any of you refuse to acknowledge that I was speaking of an experience a decade ago, you all insist that I’m trying to say that is how it is now, and I’m not fucking doing that at all.
This place takes itself way, way too seriously, in my opinion. I’m sorry for any toes I stepped on without even meaning to, and I won’t comment on the matter further.
I understood the misunderstanding from reading the previous comments.
I didn’t say you were intentionally lying, only that you were mistaken. I wasn’t making a personal attack.
I acknowledge that based on your experience that is how Plex worked 10 years ago, but it is not how it currently works. So, when you say that ‘this is how Plex works’ instead of ‘this is how Plex worked 10 years ago’ it’s implying that it still works like that when it does not. That could confuse people who are here and trying to learn.
The community exists to talk about, and help people with, self hosting. Providing incorrect information runs counter to that purpose and so community members should point out when information isn’t correct.
Misinformation just means that the information that you’re providing is not correct, it’s not a personal attack on you to be corrected about a factual issue. It doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person or suggest that you’re trying to be intentionally misleading, it just means that your statements do not match the current factual reality.
The situation did not change. You were wrong ten years ago too.
For what it’s worth, I had a pretty much identical experience a month or two back.
Plex woke up one day and decided that the TV in my living room and the server in my home-office were clearly so far apart that I’d need to give them money to stream all 20 feet over my LAN - presumably because they woke up one morning and decided that it’s more profitable not to understand VLANs (apparently not understanding VLANs is the “new Plex experience” and we should be very excited about it.) At least, that’s what their support told me - they assured me that streaming from one room to another is now a paid feature.
Naturally, I told them to go fuck themselves and installed Jellyfin. And donated 10x what a ‘Plex Pass’ would have cost to the guy that made the Samsung-Tizen-Jellyfin-Installer thingummy. Because, well, fuck Plex.
And then they all clapped.
Tremendous work, have you considered a career on the stage? Sweeping it, perhaps?
It has not changed. Your experience is, you didn’t read the docs, made an assumption, and have been incorrect ever since. Idc if you call it a lie or not, but you know now. If you continue to spread this misinformation, it is absolutely a lie.
self hosting is all about whats right for you, as said, lots here use cloudflare. I would never use cloudflare as I like to mess up my stuff on my own, not have some company piss it up and have to wait for them to fix it.
I would see plex as the half way house of self hosting, you run a service that someone else has the control over.
No, Plex is not self-hosting. Once they tried to get me to purchase a Plex Pass for remote access, I knew I needed something else that didn’t have a paywall.
That said, many people find their way to better services like Jellyfin by first using Plex and coming to this same conclusion, so I am not going to write off the Plex people yet. They will figure it out one day 🙂
Instead of plexpass you could do always on VPN with wire guard.
You’re right, but my low-tech family and friends will not be able to figure that out. lol
Definitely. Those folks for me are definitely using regular Plex to access my server.
Just because you have a poor understanding of what "self-hosting" is, doesn't make a Plex server running on your own hardware NOT self-hosting.
Plex is kind of a weird hybrid where it is self hosted but a part of the backend infrastructure is not. For my use this is advantageous because it simplifies the service for my less technically inclined family members that would struggle with using something like jellyfin.
I look at it as a comfortable middle ground to get people off Netflix and other services for now but I don’t have much faith that it will last forever with what plex is doing as a company recently.
Self hosting is as simple as hosting a service yourself on your own hardware and not relying on 3rd party servers. With that, Plex is partly self hosted, as you host part of it. But as a whole it is not a fully self hosted service. Discussing Plex in a self host group makes sense as part of it is hosted on your own hardware. Technically using a vps isn’t really self hosting, but if somebody sticks a service like immich or nextcloud onto a VPS to remove their reliance on Google, I still think posting in a self host group to discuss it is the best option.
It still is self hosting, if you don’t count media scraping as cheating.
You don’t need plexpass. In fact, I really should start installing the free version again because I use an always on vpn now instead of relying on their proxies. But at that point I’d just use jellyfin instead.
Just as much as Tailscale is self hosting. Tailscale is probably more concerning from a security point of view.
To me, Tailscale is not selfhosted at all. That’s why headscale exists.
So not at all?
Tailscale is just a Service. Not sure how you could even think calling Tailscale self hosting.
What exactly is concerning about Tailscale’s security?
I’m new to self-hosting and Tailscale was the easiest/fastest way I could get to access my stuff externally. I’m currently learning about the alternatives.
Like all VPN-like things, some amount of data has to flow through their system. But almost everything is encrypted nowadays so it’s generally not too big of a worry.
For Tailscale though, they see way less. They see your IP during device setup, and maybe during use if things are making it hard for them to enable a direct connection. Depending on your DNS setup, they may see some of your DNS requests.
Its also really easy to setup your own headscale sever and then nothing goes to them at all. I recommend a small VPS for that, rather than running it on your home internet connection.
Tailscale controls the routing, thus the traffic. They control which keys get trusted. They most of the time distribute and develop the software.
It would be quite easy for them to start snooping on traffic, while on the internet anything basically is additional encrypted, that would not apply so broadly to the traffic that get sent via tailscale especially the self hosted crowd, a lot of that traffic would be http and unencrypted.
I’m not concerned about it personally, but you are putting a lot of trust in them as a 3rd party service provider. It’s up to your specific risk profile if that’s acceptable risk or not.
The alternative would probably be self hosting a vpn yourself with dyndns to handle ip address resolution. I’m biased (I have a professional networking background) but I don’t think it’s that much harder to setup either. But then I’m also a hypocrite and don’t self host anything anymore.
There’s also a valid argument to be made that doing it yourself is riskier because novices make mistakes. I don’t think this is too big of a concern personally - it’s not like you’re rolling your own cryptography.
Im not a self hoster so never mentioned it as peanut gallery but I was wondering reading stuff. I was kinda like. Whats the point of plex sounds like you need to connect with them or something.
I think Plesk is still self-hosting. Nowhere it says that self host MUST be open source or in general, free stuff. Self hosting is host on your premises, or actually host yourself (hosting on a VPS IMHO is still selfhost).
As for Plex, i discarded it from the day 0 and went with Jellyfin directly, never looked back and i am 100% happy with my choice. I would NOT consider something like Plex (with it’s enshittification, pricing and overall shady approaches in general) as viable for my setup. But, it’s still self-host since you host your media and your service.
Yeah, to stretch OP’s definition to the limit, would you consider something self-hosted if it’s running on a Windows machine? Because even if the program is FOSS, Windows is a paid OS. How about Proxmox, an open source OS which is designed to self-host other things? Proxmox is open source, but paid. Where is the line in the sand for what is, and isn’t self-hosted?
I tend to take a more anarchic “if you set it up yourself, it’s self-hosted” approach to it. Even if the program isn’t FOSS. Even if it isn’t OSS. You had to go through the steps to get it to boot up. You had to go through the steps to acquire media for it if it’s a media service. You had to go through the steps of connecting peripherals to it if it’s something like Home Assistant. You had to go through the steps of getting remote access working if it’s on a reverse proxy. You had to go through the steps of getting the VPS configured if it’s running on a VPS. It’s being hosted on something you set up, (even if it’s a VPS that you’re not locally running) so it is self-hosted.
Eh, you can still get in with them down by hitting the local server, so I don’t think this is entirely accurate.
Would I recommend it? No, I have a lifetime pass since the early days of it being offered and I just use JF. I recommend Jellyfin.
But I’m also not going to look down on folks who dont want to deal with auth or are unsure when it comes to opening a port on a firewall, access is something Plex makes easy and I get that.
So is it self-hosting? If they are running the server, no matter if its local, a vps, whatever, then I’d say yes. Whether or not it meets with my personal ideals are irrelevant.
I understand where you’re coming from but, to me, self hosting is an ethos, not a checklist. If self hosting has to be void of a commercial entity then my services at home that are available externally aren’t self hosted since I have to rely on my ISP for that to work. And all of the electricity for my servers comes from a commercial company so those aren’t self hosted. And using a public domain isn’t self hosting.
That’s a bs comparison. You cannot login tonplonplex if they are down well you can but only locally and it isn’t the default. Also if Plex disappears yourself hosted instance is finished.
im out here wondering why anyone would hand anyone credit card information to watch already downloaded pirated content.
open source to me means open source, not open/paywall/ source.
i prefer my open source free with a lil jank. as god intended.
It’s not just about watching content, but also about having it neatly organised with your watch history tracked in a easy to use interface. And on top of that, making it easily accessible to friends/family with minimum effort.
It sure means that, but not quite sure why this is relevant. There is obviously a big overlap between self-hosters and foss enthusiast on lemmy, but for me they are unrelated.
Because I’m lazy and want to be able to watch my stuff from anywhere, and let my friends access my library easily across all their devices.
Setting up Jellyfin for remote access is not trivial. Maybe for a lot of self hosting people it’s fairly simple, but it’s not nearly as simple as just downloading and running the Plex server software.
I paid for a lifetime account when it was 250, and I felt like it was worth it. At 750 like it is now, I probably would actually have considered figuring out Jellyfin. As with everything, it’s a money/time analysis and it’s less of my time to host Plex.
I have both specifically for this reason.
Plex is for my family who only need to know ‘login to your Plex account’, but I personally use Jellyfin because I’m on my VPN. I got the lifetime pass for under $100 ($80?) and it has saved me a lot of time by preventing technical issues that would need my personal attention.
Exactly this. Jellyfin shouldn’t be available externally (even with a reverse proxy!) which means a personal VPN is your only realistic option for remote access. But that means you can only remotely access it on devices that can run a VPN. So grandma’s smart TV is probably disqualified.
Plex makes remote sharing much easier, so it’s what I use for friends and family. I got the lifetime pass like a decade ago, and I have gotten my money’s worth out of it a hundred times over. Luckily, Plex and Jellyfin will happily exist side-by-side, so there’s no real reason for me to choose one or the other.
Why would you bother with jellyfin locally if you have Plex also locally? It does nothing better.
The short answer is because it is open source.
I’m using some non-standard transcoding profiles, for example RIFE motion interpolation. I have some other server customizations so that it integrates with my home automation system a bit better.
I can’t customize Plex.
I won’t make any claims about other users, but I am using Plex for 100% legally obtained media, mostly by means of ripping physical media that I still have on my shelf. So, not everybody is using it for pirated content.
Good for you. Now, about those torrents…
Good for you. Now, about those torrents…
Not sure if you’re implying that I torrent my media… but just to be clear I don’t torrent.
Nope, I was talking about me.
By definition, you are a pirate for ripping your purchased physical media! One can only imagine the depravity of then hosting that content for others! Straight to jail!
Due to the DMCA by circumventing the copyright to rip your DVDs you are technically breaking the law. You would most definitely be considered a pirate.
I guess that depends on your definition of “piracy”… is it “breaking the law” or is it “stealing”?
In any case, the point I was making is that some people use Plex with non-stolen media. I mostly see assumptions that it’s only used for stolen media, so I wanted to offer a counter-example.
Piracy is infringing on copyright. Ripping DVDs is most definitely consider a form of piracy. Although without sharing it, I think a jury could see it as non-infringing personally.
I do agree there is a huge difference between ripping media and downloading/sharing it as far as civil liability goes.
I take some umbrage with calling either ripping or downloading stealing though as it does not deprive the owner of their property. The correct term would be commercial copyright infringement.
Technically recording TV on VHS is piracy, but in practice no one is getting sued for it.
To this point Congress was ready to eliminate the VHS home taping technology. Believe it or not Mr. Rogers came in to save the VHS from regulation death because he believed parents could record shows to watch with their children.
mentalfloss.com/…/how-mister-rogers-saved-vcr
Notable quotes
“The VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” - Jack Velanti
“I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the ‘Neighborhood’ off-the-air … they then become much more active in the programming of their family’s television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been ‘You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions’ … I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important.” - Mr. Rogers
No it isn’t
If by “your definition of piracy” you mean your country’s laws surrounding it, then in the USA you would still be breaking the law. The FBI anti-piracy warning that they put at the beginning of movies to warning you about the anti-piracy laws specifies that the unauthorized reproduction OR distribution of copyrighted works is illegal.
I’ve got no moral qualms about the way I’m handling things, nor am I judging anybody for the way they handle things. My comment was simply meant to show that not everybody is using Plex for stolen media.
Some people do not live in the US.
Surprise, DMCA exists in one form or another depending on what county you are from. Thanks to WIPO around 200 countries have similar laws.
www.wipo.int/en/web/about-wipo/member-states
Is your country on this list?
<img alt="ITT" src="https://i.imgflip.com/ariezc.gif">
is this the best this community can do? don’t y’all get tired of bitching about Plex?
I’m glad you brought up the rule in a vague way.
your post doesn’t meet the criteria, so it doesn’t belong in this community.
It’s self hosting by the literal definition that you host the server yourself.
That it’s closed source and sends all kinds of data to another server is an entirely separate (and valid) concern.
As much as I agree with the concerns around Plex, I would rather we didn’t start gatekeeping the self hosting community with arbitrary requirements and grey lines around what is and isn’t “true self hosting” or whatever. I would far rather we inform people and let them make their own choices about what they want to host on their private devices and networks.
If you are hosting software services (proprietary or not) on hardware you control, in a network you control, then you are self-hosting. What the service itself actually is is irrelevant.
Yes. Ask another question, the one we’re all aching to respond 😜
For me, if I can’t use it when the internet is down it’s not self-hosting, so Plex certainly isn’t for me.
Mine works when the internet is down. Why doesn’t yours?
Because they’re a silly goose who never learned to google
But the internet is down, so how can they google?
This. I’ve had a couple of situations where we had an ISP outage and for whatever reason Plex Auth had expired and needed to connect to their servers to regain access to local media. The first time it happened I was pissed off. The second time it happened I installed Jellyfin and never looked back.
Jellyfin. Jellyfin. JELLYFIN. install it now? Is it the right fit? Fuck you who cares. I loaded Jellyfin and it worked for me so if it doesn’t work for you then you’re wrong!
Jellyfin!
Forget Emby or Kodi. JELLYFIN JELLYFINJELLUFIN!!!
Despite the downvotes this does seem pretty accurate for this community lately.
Yep, which is why I’m doing it. I tried reasonable debate but that didn’t work sooo……
thank you for not using /s and just taking the downvotes like champ!
I mean, at the end of the day the imaginary points aren’t good for anything. Thanks for the comment (seriously).
You can white list local IP address if you want them to work without auth. Just a config issue in your end.
This was for the server itself requiring re-authentication with Plex for the server claim token, rather than client auth. Some situation arose where the claim token was no longer valid, expired, unsure, and the server was locked out and local media inaccessible until ISP outage resolved and could login with Plex account (2 weeks due to fallen tree). Not ruling out a config issue. Was a couple of years ago now, so bit fuzzy on the details.
What? You need internet to use plex? Can’t you just type in the local IP?
You can use Plex without the Internet. But it takes an extra two or three setup steps, so lots of people immediately jump to “wahhh my Plex isn’t working” when their Internet goes out. Not because it can’t work, but because they didn’t jump through the extra hoops to ensure it does.
The crowd that claims that setting up an elaborate VPN scheme is fine has a problem entering an IP range?
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Not really. I actually got rid of my Amazon Fire Stick because it didn’t work offline, but Plex did. I discovered this because my TV automatically showed the Plex shares as browsable media sources, which were being broadcast over DLNA.
.
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You can use plex when the internet is down.
Plex is not self hosting
Jellyfin. Have you heard about our Lord and Saviour Jellyfin? Fuck you if you don’t run Jellyfin. Emby? Never heard of it over me running Jellyfin.
You’re nothing if you don’t run Jellyfin. NOTHING.
Vulnerabilities? Yes, but who cares. What are you communist? Letting the paid software win even though it’s got better and easier security out of the box?
Plex technically IS self-hosting but the significance of self is pretty low as Plex has a lot of control over it.
Plex has zero control over it unless you want to do remote streaming.
It is not open source so you can’t say for sure. So the null hypothesis is that Plex has unlimited control over all of the hosted servers.
Yes
I’m going to shame people for using something that used to work well. This will help me by making me feel superior, and it will help others by shaming them. What a good idea I’ve had!
Do you really feel attacked by this post?
Attacked? No this post alone doesn’t make me feel attacked.
Though it’s about weekly that we see a post saying essentially “there’s no reason anyone should still be using Plex…”, or “jellyfin is superior to plex because of x and y”. And honestly, it’s tiring and it feels forced. Like if jellyfin were so perfect, would it really need this many posts propping it up?
Anyway, what bugged me about this post was the level of smugness. “Does Plex even count as self hosting?”, “is this really in the spirit of the community?”… God damn, that sounds like the least bearable person in the homeowners association.
I own the media I stream, no commercials and using it local is totally free. Also its been proven to be more secure than jellyfin with their recent scare - reddit.com/…/psa_update_to_jellyfin_10117_immedia…
Plex sucks
Plex used to be for the community. Their recent decisions have proven otherwise, they are seeking more of the almighty dollar so the imaginary money line will keep going up forever.
Sounds familiar.
So I don’t disagree with you on principle.
Now technically, Plex is self-hosted as you run the server program on your own hardware and can determine whether you want to use their authentication servers or roll your own internal thing.
Many of us are caught on the convenience of Plex and actively are working to replicate that with alternatives.
There are a few features that are not replicated anywhere else:
Its a matter of not having these being more annoying than Plex is.
If you can’t download the software and then run it on an isolated, air gapped network like on a desert island, then it isn’t self hosting.
Please don’t try to gatekeep software or turn selfhosting into a Professional Redditor Larper shitwar like iOS vs Android. Literally no one needs or wants that.
You can criticise Plex for its many shortcomings, that’s valid. Even better if you contribute to Jellyfin so it can overcome its shortcomings. But saying Plex is not self-hosted for puritan reasons is not a good look and smells like StackOverflow and elitist neckbeards; you’re disqualifying people from the community just because you, in your infinite pedantic wisdom, cannot comprehend that they also have valid reasons for using what they use.
By this logic:
I could go on.
By any stretch of this line of thinking, even the mere act of downloading any software in the first place disqualifies it from counting as self-hosted, because you didn’t build it from scratch and you depend on an external resource, your ISP, a DNS resolver, your operating system, your hardware (microcode, BIOS), your browser, and so on and so forth. The logic breaks down very fast. Don’t.
Sir this is a Wendy’s
Fr tho why would you even start?
OP is clearly talking about the core values of this community (named SelfHosted btw) and whether or not the parent company of Plex (clearly a self-hosted piece of software that happens to be a critical component of Plex’s SaaS product) operates in the spirit of this community and your galaxy brain is over here arguing the semantics of the dictionary definition of the word self-hosted lmao
You were so busy trying to come up with examples of how they’re wrong you forgot to correct them about the name
“Sir you’re actually talking about Plex Media Server, Plex the company is a company and clearly not a piece of self-hosted software”
Making fun of someone to deflect from their valid criticism hasn’t worked on me as an audience to an argument since way before I hit puberty, but I understand it might still work on some other people.
Sure any criticism is valid, it’'s less valid when they miss OPs point, and after a certain length it becomes unnecessarily condescending.
I’m not trying to deflect from their criticism or how it displays their misunderstanding of OPs point, I’m trying to say they were being an asshole about it
I don’t think they were being an asshole about it.
Sorry if I came off that way. About misunderstanding the point - look at the other comments. People are making the same points as me. I don’t think I have misunderstood anything here, and I don’t think being a long response automatically makes it any less valid to understand how nuanced and all encompassing our dependence on third parties is.
You’re the one saying “this is a Wendy’s” which feels quite condescending in a post explicitly asking for opinions on how where Plex falls in the selfhosting community, including as defined in the sidebar.
But you’re not locked into Plex. You have your files already on your hardware and you have the ability to reuse those files for any other service.
at this point, Plex is self-shooting-in-the-foot
Well that would be the description of the community, but the actual rules section doesn’t say anything about privacy/control.
So at the end of the day Plex is self hosted (you run most of it) so it should qualify. It might not 100% match the spirit of self hosting it does still meet the definition.
You can argue most Jellyfin/emby installs have the same problem because most users are still are dependent on external services because of things like metadata plugins.
And on the privacy front those plugins aren’t any better than Plex. For instance The Movie DB which is the primary movie and TV metadata provider for Jellyfin has a privacy policy that clearly says they will use and share any interaction you have with the site including location and personal information. They almost certainly keep track of what is in your library. They don’t have a user account for you that they can use to track across IPs, but if your ISP keeps you on the same IP for long periods of time they have a good idea of what you are watching.
You can run Jellyfin without those plugins enabled but unless you want to build/collect manual nfo files to import that data you are going to have a subpar experience.
Same problem for the **arr stack since they need metadata as well. Some of which go to different providers so you are giving out that information to additional parties (i.e. Sonarr goes to TheTVDB which has a similar privacy policy).
You can configure the arrs to write out nfo metadata and have Jellyfin consume that so that at least you aren’t giving away your info to two external parties.