Text:
I consent to Plex to: (i) sell certain personal information (hashed emails, advertising identifiers) to third-parties for advertising and marketing purposes; and (ii) store and/or access certain personal information (advertising identifiers, IP address, content being watched) on my device(s) and share that information with Plex’s advertising partners. This data is used to deliver personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. Your consent applies to all devices on which you have Plex installed. You can withdraw your consent at any time in Account Settings or using this page.
Soure: https://www.plex.tv/vendors/ (Might have to clear cache)
Can also read about the changes here: https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/
Jellyfin is hardly a no-brainer. I set it up out of curiosity a few weeks ago and my first question was how do I give access to my friends and family. So I searched, and all of the results were talking about setting up a VPN or a reverse proxy or whatever. Man, I just want to tell my mom "install this app on your tv and log in", which is exactly what Plex does.
I get that Plex is enshittifying, but pretending Jellyfin is a drop-in replacement is delusional.
Since you need to self-host Jellyfin, then you are responsible for making the service public.
The best thing is, you can't use a reverse proxy with it, it doesn't even support it.
I don't even know what a reverse proxy is
Jellyfin is a no-brainer. Publishing services on the Internet is complex.
Not if you use plex, which is the entire draw
Yeah, but then you're not self-hosting, you're paying or using their free services to manage that for you.
You’re hosting the media still. It’s basically a hybrid between getting Netflix and running Jellyfin. They handle the delivery, you handle the media.
Yup. And letting them collect data on what goes through their service is the cost.
Yes. No one is debating that. The point is "why would you ever use plex?" is a simple answer: you can easily and quickly watch your pirated shit on all your devices with basically no technical knowledge at all. Yes people are willing to compromise for that, many people simply do not give a shit either way. But this insistence that people here "can't possibly get why anyone would use Plex" is just insane to me.
Happens with most services.
I’m sure that one boutique website you shopped on had buried in the T&C that they can sell your data.
If they adhered to somewhat modern security principles for their Backend I wouldn't mind hosting it behind a reverse proxy. But since large parts of the API is unauthorized and unprotected, I wont.
And I do not plan on supporting family and friends in setting up vpns on all of their devices
What are the worries behind it? Last time someone was worried about the security it was about knowing filenames of the stuff you host by brute forcing iirc
Knowing (guessing) the file path allows them to access and stream the content. Meaning worst case scenario... Sony (the people known for putting malicious stuff on CDs) can probe your server, and prove the content is there because your server will return the movie file itself.
The issue is their approach to security. I don't trust them to properly secure their software, since they have proven to prefer client compatibility over security.
Understandable. I don't worry that much myself since I haven't heard anything bad happening yet. And with ro rights to media, potential damage at least should be pretty limited.
Depends entirely on where you live I would think.
You’re in a post about people outraged about an opt-in anonymous data sharing option on Plex, and you’re not worried about known security issues because you haven’t heard of anything bad happening yet?
Make it make sense.
I'm not sure how a service selling my data and services having potential security issues are the same. Two different issues imo
I don't care if they probe for my media considering I block 99% of the world. Yes blah blah they could get around it. If someone really wants to see what I have on my media server that bad, I don't think I'd be able to stop them anyway.
Yes, but that person has to create an account. Everyone has to create an account. With Plex. Some people I know immediately say no, others are annoyed that plex would try and shake them down for money.
If you configure Jellyfin, all that goes away. THEN they can simply download the app and login.
I make the account for them. Then I log in as them and set it up so they only see my server. Then I send them the credentials and have them login
Seconded it’s not a no-brainer. I spent days trying to get it set up with Docker on two different computers and three different distros. It wouldn’t install, if it did install it had errors, if it would even open at all with anything other than a black screen. Hours trying to search how to fix it. I gave up and installed it as a standalone app on a common distro. Not as convenient, but FML it finally worked. Really felt like I wasted my time. Personally, this is the exact bullshit linux fanatics completely ignore when they insist on how great linux is vs whatever. I’ve got a shitload of patience, willpower and modest skill to try to get something like this working, but 99% of the population doesn’t. That’s why linux will stay on the back burner. And if it ever becomes just as easy as Windows…guess what? You’ll have many of the same problem as Windows.
I've definitely pulled my hair out with docker too. Banged my head against the wall for a couple days before finally giving up.
I'm not ridiculously tech savvy, but I've tinkered with Linux since I was young, daily drive it on my laptop. I'm not afraid of the command line, and I'm smart enough to search for help and guides when I need it.
But something about docker just breaks my brain. Maybe I'm too old and there's too much abstract thought required, I don't know. But I can't figure it out.
IMO it was my hardware on the first tries. Not sure what your problem was, but after digging around I found something that loosely indicated that my hardware was too old or something - it didn’t play well with the onboard graphics or similar. But the second hardware set I tried it on was far newer, and after all the installation was complete I got a black screen. Every time. No matter which guide I used, no matter what dependencies I thought might be missing or whatever I tried to get it working. A hair pulling experience indeed.
You struggled to set up Jellyfin with docker?
Damn
I am a devops engineer and application architect who spends their entire day developing automated docker deployments for custom applications from scratch and I manage all our reverse proxies and TLS termination and certificates.
5 years ago, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you what a docker container really was. Thankfully migrating legacy apps to docker on Linux hosts is my full time job and it has allowed me to become proficient enough in a fairly short amount of time.
We all have to start somewhere and shitting on someone for not knowing something now will dissuade them from ever learning it and potentially remove a future contributor to the open source tech stack before they ever even get started.
If they said they had trouble understanding docker it would've been clearer, but they said Jellyfin was the issue.
Don’t be smug.
I'll take any chance, even one involving docker
I mean, if I didn't know better, I'd start to suspect that the large multimedia corporations building walled gardens of apps in closed Smart TV ecosystems don't really want you to be able to easily tell your mom how to watch shit for free. I mean they'll let you, if you really insist on having that app available, but someone will have to pay THEM money instead first (and probably let them spy on you). That's their racket.
The reason Plex can do it is because they do make money, doing shitty stuff like this to their users, so they can use that money to open these doors into SmartTV-land. The root of the problem is that your SmartTV itself (and your mom's) is a locked down proprietary piece of shit, designed exclusively for shoving all proprietary content these media companies develop down your throat, and there are few convenient workarounds that are available to us, because of course they make workarounds as inconvenient as possible.
Unless you're willing to ditch everything proprietary and insist on open technology for everything, which is hard on its own, you're going to end up with a janky mix of proprietary and open systems that always require some compromises, because the proprietary stuff forces us to compromise. It's literally a "this is why we can't have nice things" situation.
Or... You know... Jellyfin could make it so I don't have to setup elaborate VPN schemes and have every user install that on every one of their devices. For example they could fix their security issues to make it safer to expose JF through a reverse proxy, bug they refuse to not break client compatibility
I'm not a hardcore tech person and this is exactly the issue for me as well.
I want to be able to stream my music collection when I'm away from home without having to get an associate's degree in networking.
Tailscale makes this easy if you are the only user.
I'll look into Tailscale then. I'm guessing there's something funky about adding additional users. I would eventually like to add one or two other people.
I think the free tier lets you have three users. I ended up going with headscale so that could be wrong.
It's not that hard but they will have to make accounts and set the correct exit node or use the weird magic dns. Takes some hand-holding and depends on how you set things up.
Jellyfin is a fully self hosted drop in. That means it's up to the server operator to handle everything. You would still tell your mom to just install the Jellyfin app on her TV with the one additional step in your server address which you would tell her.
But yes, you as the operator have to do some extra things like implementating a reverse proxy and if hosting out of your home make necessary network configuration changes to accommodate this access.
You as server operator also have to check what device your mom has and point her to what app download, because Jellyfin doesn't have an app for everything
True though that's less server operator and more "just being helpful to your mom". That said it seems nowadays that a Jellyfin app is available on most devices/ecosystems (or maybe I just don't have experience with enough devices to have an accurate idea).
So I told people download app enter this url and login. I even send out an email inviting them so they can click the link and create their own username and password. Then if they forget their password they can ask for a reset link.
There is one thing I want from jellyfin. It is to be able to login from their Android app to watch or set something to record without jumping through a bunch of hoops.
This is why I use Yunohost. It makes all of that just a "click buttons" affair. Then you can tell your Mom the same thing. Only the domain is yours so Jellyfin can't hold it over your head.
Does it work on a smart tv or roku or whatever?
Yeah they have apps on all the platforms.
All of these, plus more unofficial ones: https://jellyfin.org/docs/general/installation/