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?
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at this point, Plex is self-shooting-in-the-foot
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.
If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch then you must first invent the universe
- Karl Sagan
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:
- If you use the internet, nothing you access through it is self-hosted, because your ISP dictates if it’s allowed or not. Tailscale, WireGuard, OpenVPN, or a direct port connection are all subject to this. However you can access Jellyfin remotely is subject to this.
- Docker isn’t self-hosted - you depend on Docker Inc, their image registry will be aware of some details about your host, including your IP, which is technically PII and is directly linked to you.
- Let’s Encrypt certificates aren’t self-hosted because they’re an external CA and collect data like your email.
- Jellyfin is not self-hosted, it depends on TMDB and OMDB which are commercial or external.
- Pi-hole is not self-hosted as it depends in many cases on GitHub or external resources for its block lists, and it depends on public resolvers to operate.
- Ubuntu is not self-hosted because Canonical controls everything and has telemetry
- Neither is Windows, Mac, Debian, Arch, or even FreeBSD - they control updates and packages and if they randomly become evil, they have levers on you no matter what. Maybe TempleOS lol.
- Nextcloud is not self-hosted because they control the add-on store, update servers and has telemetry.
- The BitTorrent protocol isn’t self hosted because you rely on trackers and they collect telemetry about your client
- Media piracy isn’t self-hosted because you’re relying on other people to produce it for you
- If you get phone notifications, emails, messages, or whatever else - those aren’t self hosted. Even if you host Ntfy you’re still relying on Apple or Google notification relay servers.
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
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.
I don’t think they were being an asshole about it.
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.
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:
- the Plex magic proxy
- combined libraries
- Easy to use apps because of 1
Its a matter of not having these being more annoying than Plex is.
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.
Plex sucks
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 - https://www.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/1s94a18/psa_update_to_jellyfin_10117_immediately_critical/
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.
Yes
Plex technically IS self-hosting but the significance of self is pretty low as Plex has a lot of control over it.
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 is not self hosting
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.
You can use plex when the internet is down.
This can be done but you need to set the ip address ranges that don’t require auth when you can still get into the server(aka have internet). Then it works without internet fine.
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.
That’s an option too but that’s mostly just DLNA and not really Plex (as the client).
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.
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 to Jellyfin and never looked back.
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.
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).
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?
