I moved to Jellyfin yesterday. I’m running unraid but works the same on any OS really. Install it via your preferred method and mount the data/make libraries if it is installed directly to the OS then let it scan. Note that if you were following the TVDB’s naming scheme you will want to install the official Jellyfin TVDB metadata plugin and make sure it is at the top of your list of metadata providers for each library you create. If you have any trouble please reach out to me on here and i’d be happy to help.
Just so everyone on this thread is aware Plex the company has shown by enabling this feature in the manner they did to have no care about user privacy. I am sure that there are people who work at Plex who are beating their heads against the wall about this knowing that this was going to happen. If everyone just moves to Jellyfin we can solve this issue the way it was meant to be solved. They said users had a choice, well why don’t we show them we really do with Jellyfin and Emby.
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Plex needs to get on top of this like NOW. It’s turned into a major sh*tstorm on all big Plex social media groups Reddit, Facebook etc. if they are not careful this could be catastrophic
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Best thing they could do is just roll it back and re-evaluate everything.
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You are right but they will not course correct until they have a reason too. The only way we can make this happen is by forcing them through showing that the server admins will not stand for this stupidity. Turn on Jellyfin get it setup shutdown Plex. If enough people do this they will have no choice but to fix this and hopefully just remove the feature all together.
If we keep our Plex servers running and people using them we will only reinforce their position that this feature is something people wanted.
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Watch state sync is disabled until you explicitly enable it, it’s not default behaviour.
There is good post here clarifying a few things: Discover Together: Public Release - #3 by PlexInfo
This isn’t the silver bullet explanation you think it is.
“This has no information about where you watched it”… At this point, I don’t think there’s a lot of trust that this is true.
What happens when a chunk of users across the world suddenly start having “the hot new movie that’s not available on home release just yet” show up in their histories at the same time, and the studios come knocking for information on the users who’ve watched it?
Edit for an example: If a bunch of users have data that suggests they’ve watched a new movie ahead of its “official” home release, and they all only have one friend within Plex… This doesn’t take a genius to work out where that file is stored. Can you genuinely not see how this is a disturbing privacy issue? Honestly?
Honestly, I love Plex. I’ve loved Plex for 15 years. But this is a phenomenal screw up.
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Yeah we saw that post. Heres the problem you face
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Plex’s explanation shows clearly that you put onto a player screen these ‘choices’. While I don’t personally remember seeing that myself or clicking on it any member of our household, including children, could have done that. The method you chose could not have ensured the explicit consent of the account holder. and and consent given by a minor is not binding in nearly every decent jurisdiction int he world.
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Plexs explanation is also not jiving with your userbase. Why? You changed the default options for privacy so that, in order to continue watching, users were effectively tricked to ‘opt in’. You cant say people explicitly opted in when you made the default values a change from the users existing settings, while also putting a nice padlock there and telling people ‘you are in control’ (with these settings). Its a bait n switch, plain n simple.
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You tricked your userbase by doing the same things as marketers who put “tick this box if you DO want marketing materials” - as most people expect that ticking the box says no to marking materials. The explanation post just serves as a confirmation that Plex grossly violated your userbases trust and tricked them into “opt in” to it at the same time.
Again, read a room. You can say people opted in, but your spectacularly tricked your userbase and did not consider that there is not a 1:1 mapping of viewing user to account holder when you flashed up that opt in screen. I, as account holder, never saw it. I, as account holder, never agreed to a change to the privacy policy.
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That is a horribly worded post and you know it - which is why noone from plex,inc dares to use their real account to sign it.
It needs to be at most 3 bullets explaining why Plex,inc opted users into sharing personal data with friends and plex,inc is working to immediately remove that functionality.
This is a safety issue. I find it troubling that no-one left after the recent layoff can understand this.
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I’m not saying that it’s default behavior
What I find troubling is the fact that this is passed off as a totally anonymous dataset that doesn’t actually represent the items someone may have on their server
You see this in the info page when you enable the feature in the UI
- Plex does not collect filenames from any Plex Media Server
But if you take the time to visit one of the highlighted links on that screen you’re taken to the support article where you see this
What Data Gets Synced (i.e. Privacy)
Watched State
- The GUID for the title (i.e. which movie, show, or episode was acted upon)
You don’t collect the titles and that is technically true. You collect the string of numbers that identifies the title
I feel like this is purposely misleading
First of all, a lot of people will never click every highlighted link on the page when they enable this and everybody knows that
Even if they did wind up on the support article, I’m guessing that most of them have no idea what GUID even stands for. I feel like it’s purposely meant to give a layman the impression that this is completely innocuous, anonymized, unidentifiable data
Is the user partially responsible for this, absolutely. But being lazy and skipping past some of this stuff is just called being a human being
Are people giving Plex consent? Absolutely
Are people giving Informed consent? I feel like the answer to that is no and I’m also feeling like that’s not entirely an accident
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Informed consent… Yup. It’s akin to the frustration caused by auto-updates in legacy Macs: Anyway to Stop Auto Update of Plexamp?.
I bought a PlexPass a little too early, methinks!
I’m sorry to say this but that’s a badly worded post and it reads like written in a rush and in a state of panic after the fact.
Not to mention that this is not how it really was.
To me it is so plainly obvious that they breached their privacy policy, I can’t even fathom how they sleep at night. “But but but… rating content and marking content as watched doesn’t mean we’re tracking what’s in your library.” Oh yeah? How many people out there use Plex like it’s trakt.tv and not as a conduit for their media library? Clear BS and snake-in-the-grass deceptive behavior. I hope a hefty lawsuit teaches Plex a lesson.
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HOW is it legal for Plex to send my watch activity to all my users?!
Last MONTH I set everything to PRIVATE in the “Privacy” settings of my profile.
TODAY one of my friends forwarded me email that Plex sent them yesterday - and it shows ALL of the shows/movies I’ve been watching THIS PAST WEEK! EVEN THOUGH THE SETTING IS SET TO PRIVATE!!
This is the worst privacy breech I have been exposed to!
Do we need to get this into the legacy media to do articles about Plex’s massive breech?
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