That’s only possible if users were changing the ‘default’ privacy suggestions to ‘Friends of Friends’. If you were to just click through the splash screens and have the settings set to (or changed to) ‘Friends’, then while other people will be able to see you are ‘friends’ with the server admin they won’t see any of your watch history. You’d have to actually become friends with each other for that info to share.
You’re correct and that’s what I was trying to convey really - that they might not realize the extent of choosing “friends of friends” since they never actually did a friend request themselves. The people “friends” or “friends of friends” would end up including isn’t clear to users. Particularly with server admins automatically “friending” shared accounts.
Sharing content as a server admin and friending are separate functions now but Plex defaulted to “opting in” all shared accounts as friends and you have to go remove them from your friends profile manually now (which doesn’t have to remove them from sharing but you can). You can now share content without being friends (I think - might have to friend, then share, then unfriend since Plex employee said all shares accounts had to be friends first but that might have changed now), or friend without sharing content.
They say all shared accounts were also “friends” of the admin as of several years ago … that’s probably technically true in some paperwork way, it still doesn’t change the fact that it feels disingenuous how they handled it.
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While I agree they might not realise exactly what that means in a ‘Plex’ context, I don’t imagine many people would think I don’t know what that means so I’ll choose it anyway. It’s far more likely that it’ll either be put (back) to ‘Private’ or left as ‘Friends’.
There have certainly been errors on Plex’s part in terms of how this has been rolled out/communicated and people should quite rightly raise those as an issue, but I have a real problem with some of the misinformation that has started to gain traction. Such as this idea that Discover Together means that without you (as a user) doing anything your watching history will be emailed to all and sundry. It’s simply not the case, but I have seen a number of posters claim this is what happens/will happen.
It does also feel a little hypocritical that server admins for years have been (knowingly or not) collecting quite a lot of information about what their users are watching, but it’s only now when their watching history might be shared that it’s something worth speaking up about.
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I believe this is the disagreement that us users and Plex,inc/yourself have? A user did zero affirmative action and viewing history was mysteriously emailed out.
What I have presented to the EU’s GDPR commissioner’s office is that a user’s viewing history was shared without opting in. Pre-populated checkboxes is not opting in (there is no affirmative action in that instance). Therefore emailing out viewing history is opt-out. I hope the EU levies the max $20M fine.
I find this most concerning how Plex, inc (especially Keith/Intercap) in the Bay Area doesn’t understand how this is a safety issue.
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I’m not sure why you’re telling me this. I’ve never said that hasn’t happened.
Never going to happen. The idea that they’d even consider such a huge fine over this is laughable at best.
You’re not wrong that server admins could see that activity - I did mention that in my post. I’d say the process for sharing between admin\user was pretty explicit about activity being visible to the admin and it is a very direct and personal action to join someone’s personal server. I think there’s a difference between a company collecting data about user activity for various uses and a self-hosting server admin inviting an IRL personal relation to their server and knowing - if they want to go look - that they watched Roger Rabbit via a Roku device on Thursday.
I do think some of the furor is a bit out of proportion and there’s misinformation\confusion about the options - this post from OttoKerner does a good job covering the relevant options - but I think a lot of that goes to how Plex handled this poorly and the focus should be placed there rather than people’s reaction to it.
Edit: When I say “out of proportion” I only mean that Plex is a company with investors and a profit margin and such and that the “old” Plex is gone so tempering expectations for current Plex might be helpful. I know I have… 
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I agree that there is a difference between information being collected by Plex (as a business entity) for their purposes and information being collected by the Plex server being run by a ‘admin’. However, I wouldn’t agree that the sharing of information with ‘admins’ is explicit to users. I know from personal experience that users have been surprised to find out I could see what they they were watching in real time on the server or could find out what they had watched in the past. I just suspect people are more forgiving of it because of their (presumably) existing relationship with the ‘admin’.
I also agree a lot of the focus should be placed on Plex. However, I don’t think that gives a free pass to everyone else to whip up hyperbole or parrot misinformation. All that does is dilute the valid concerns that are out there and distract from what actually needs to get sorted so Plex can have their Discover Together feature and we (as users) can feel our choices are being respected.
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Somehow this whole topic just makes it obvious how very transparent PLEX user’s data has become through the years. It gets collected and can be pulled at any time. Scary.
Off topic a bit:
I got into PLEX many years ago, because I wanted to stream my own media to my devices. I don’t need to have a social media platform, USA-focussed free tv- or movie channels. I’d prefer to be able to use PLEX locally without their login servers and my audiobooks would need a library. But these basic things PLEX never managed to offer . Instead we get bells and whistles I do not care for. Sorry. but … I don‘t want to change everything to Jellyfin, so I stick with PLEX.
Happy they aren‘t selling my watching-habits (or are they already?), or forcing me to login through Meta or Microsoft … yet.
On topic again:
I really had to opt-out of „discover together“ too, because the pattern used when introducing discover-together just makes you click „yes“ first. And be sorry for it later.
Just my thoughts. Happy when other users like the way this got implemented.
And still: thanks for PLEX - use it all the time
I went to look at those privacy controls a couple days ago when this started, and I saw all the activity sharing functions were set to Private, as I set them on the original slideshow (I didn’t just click through without reading). But the last setting, for profile visibility that is not part of the Slideshow controls, was actually set to “Everyone” for me. I changed that to Friends Only and it did have some watch history on it. Only a few things from Plex’s ad-supported service I’ve watched, which I had to delete one at a time. ( 
). My own server stuff (+95% of my Plex usage) was not listed.
I don’t think the profile page itself is a new invention for Discover Together. Remember that a Plex login also serves as a forums login, too. So I think it was piggybacked off that and since my forum profile was likely set to visible for all the Plex profile became like that.
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No they didn’t need to, but they clearly wanted to and seemed to hit the nail on the head while doing so
The correct thing for Plex to do at this point is to apologise, disable this feature for everyone, redesign the onboarding “opt-in” flow so that it’s actually opt-in and follows all relevant laws, and show the onboarding flow to everyone again. The people that actually want to use the feature can then opt-in.
I feel like they may be too proud to apologise though, and will keep thinking they’re doing the right thing. We’ll see.
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It’s really obvious Plex saw this as a way to get more engagement and therefore more revenue. This was purposeful. It tells you a lot about their commitment to privacy. $$$ are more important. To them.
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Everyone’s accounts need to be retroactively set to private at this point (opted out by default). There’s so many users out there, especially less tech savvy ones, that have no idea that they need to go and opt out of these items now that they’ve accidentally opted in by a very confusing launch page. If a user chooses to go in and opt themselves in, that’s their choice. You have not given that clear option in the steps taken over the past month.
Plex you need to make this right. I’m on the verge of shutting down to protect my collection of close friends/family members from their private lives being unfairly broadcasted. This is not the product I decided to support way back when I opted to purchase a Plex Pass. Had I known moves like this were coming later down the road I absolutely would have supported another dev team/product instead.
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Just wanted to chime in that a friend just sent me a screenshot of my watch history being shared, which I absolutely didn’t “opt-in” to do. This is really, really gross on Plex’s part. Even more so that they appear to be doubling down and claiming that pre-changing a user’s privacy setting is “opt-in”. Changing a setting on someone’s behalf is the opposite of opt-in.
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Just received an email from Plex with « trends » regarding an ex-colleague NAS all because we have shared our libraries 7 years ago.
I don’t even talk to this guy anymore. They are « embarrassing » movies in this mail.
Does he knows that ? Does he have mails regarding MY watchlist/trends/what I’ve watched (yes probably) ?
What about my parents as we shared libraries too ?
Self hosting is to keep our data/metadata PRIVATE and have control on it. That’s why we use Plex. That’s the point.
What were you thinking ? That users will be pleased with this « new feature » ? What a nice surprise.
This is the cherry on the already crappy « we don’t even answer our users asking for features for YEARS » cake.
I have a Jellyfin container running for months and from now on I will start to really use it. At last with FOSS projects this kind of things (as well as feature requests) are under control.
What an absolute disaster.
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Bumpin
They are likely maintaining silence on this since it’s such a clear legal issue.
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Had a friend tell me he’s lost all trust with Plex because of this. I don’t know how this is still considered ok by Plex, other than this is part of the internal profitability roadmap and it’s seen as mandatory by the owners. This has become such an obviously bad decision. Where’s the mea culpa? No one is going to let this disappear. The noise will not go away.
Accept that your definition of “opt-in” was flawed and misaligned with the community. Make a change to true “opt-in” instead of the “blink and you’ll miss it opt-out decision that was provided earlier this year”. The only people you’re tricking into believing this was a good thing are your investors.
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Actively looking into migrating myself and my friends off Plex because of this. Selling our data to 40 different advertising companies wasn’t enough?
“Continue” and “Go to Settings” are not clear opt-in/opt out button CTAs. I can’t believe Plex is still doing this nonsense. I hope Plex gets dealt a stern lesson in respecting user privacy.
