It seems that every time Plex makes a change two things happen:
Things get WORSE because I either lose functionality or lose files or my library gets F’ed.
The so called wonderful new features end up being a dogs dinner and a blocker I have to jump over to get to my content.
So I am asking, no pleading, PLEASE tell me there is a simple way to just disable this discover nonsense*.
I did not ask for it and I do not want it.
I am just getting over the last revision of a revision which completely screwed my setup.
There was a time when I could just disconnect the Internet and leave my clients in their old state, but no, they force a connection now.
How clear do I need to make this, I do NOT want channels, news or anything, I just want a pretty front end to my content.
The LAST thing I want is some damn algorithm going through my content or my library or whatever, so it can create a profile and sell my data to advertisers.
Is it time to get out of Plex, is that what has to happen to stop the commercial force feeding nonsense*?
If Plex is not open source then do we need to start an open source alternative to stop this or is there a config setting or a switch or something that turns off this nonsense*,
I don’t want to try it, I am not interested, I do not want more menu options, more content stealing my screen estate.
Please help if you can.
When I say nonsense I mean something far stronger but I am respecting the snowflakes out there that may be offended.
From their official blog: “Because we take privacy so seriously at Plex, we wanted to explain that availability checks talk directly to the media servers and not to any hosted services (to be clear: you’re not ever sending a list of your server content to Plex). Instead, Plex client applications will check directly for a match within the libraries you have access to. (Note: In order to have your server be included in availability checks, you will need to make sure your movie & TV libraries are using the latest agents—this feature won’t work with older agents.)”
Are they speaking Russian or what? Saying the exact opposite of what they are doing.
We take it so seriously that we are NOT going to give you an option, but going to trawl through your stuff.
QUESTION
How do we install older agents?
I am spitting nails right now.
LEAVE MY SH`T alone.
Thanks for the Jellyfin tip, I am going to check it out.
I want to be nice but I am getting fed up with software developers being arrogant cans and companies stealing my data to sell on in some way or another.
To be honest, Plex is a business and they go where the money takes them. Personal media vs streaming wars is a no brainer, take what you can, there are plenty of open source based alternatives available. The time will come when plex will invest less and less in personal media lest they end up the way of Block Buster. This is the truth.
I’m fine with this feature, but I fully agree, we need the OPTION TO TURN IT OFF, not just “unpin” it.
Many of us have families and we LOVE PLEX because it allows us to control what content our families view. Features such as “Discover” and “Movies and Shows” and “Live TV” remove control from us, the admins.
Plex used to be about empowering us the content owners. Now Plex seems to be about pushing its content on us.
Yes they’re are, on both counts. The only question is will they lose as much as they gain? Features like discover are a big draw for fair weather hoarders of personal media, which is the majority of people. Bottom line, all these strategies are deliberate and we will continue to scream into the void about Plex making them. Unfortunately this is the way of business/capitalism.
So the way I watch plex is I have a headless Windows PC and some ROKU clients plus I might use a client on a laptop or phone. The PC has an external hard disk with the majority of my library. I have sub PG-13 on internal disk and movies with an IMDB rating of less than 67%, if something is good I move it to my main movies or my new movies.
That PC is not going to make Windows 11 and so Microsoft will force me to Linux if it stops working after 5 years, if it is like Win7 and keeps working then I will stick with it.
I was considering moving Plex to a Raspberry Pi to save space but not sure if viable.
I have several routers, Netgear and Linksys, they run OpenWrt which is essentially Linux.
So maybe I look at this Jellyfin and see if one of my routers can run it with the 4TB disk plugged into the USB3 port.
This is a lot of hassle which is why people get emotive about Plex pulling this nonsense*
There is NO nonsense with this feature. If you don’t like it keep it un-pinned. It’s doing absolutely no harm being tucked away if you don’t like it.
I find it will be innovating and useful to many people who don’t have the resources to collect large libraries like half the people here.
As long as it’s not completely intrusive (which it isn’t) then it’s fine.
One thing I would suggest is being able to turn the search off in the Plex meta agents so we aren’t querying 3rd party services for no reason.
If the search can be disabled but sometime in the future we decide to link a service Plex could then re-enable it for that service as part of the setup process.
It’s not doing no harm being unpinned. It’ll confuse the hell out of my family who use my plex server which they will then call me about. Same thing has happened each time plex adds one of these online features
