haha yeah, duh! do you want to be bothered or something?
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I think the writing was on the wall the day Plex added “Free Movies & TV” to the app icon. Says it all. We’ve gone full on commercial, and it’s no longer about our own media. They’re fishing for users beyond we, the file holders.
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So the difference to me is that I thought Plex was a trusted friend or community, but the reality is that Plex is not an organisation that is easy for me to sue.
I have no idea what tools / AI Plex is using to nor do I have any idea what they can determine from me liking spagetti westerns or whatever.
So I am in the UK, my medical data is supposed to be sacrisanct right, you have to opt to share your data, first with other NHS Trusts outside your area and second for anonymous data. Needless to say I opted OUT of both when Tony Blair wanted to sell it and attach it to an ID card system he failed to get in.
During the Pandemic I found that my data had been shared and both of these preferences were ignored and overridden, by order of the then Health Minister (the one who had a grope on office CCTV) and my data was sold forever.
So I have been using GDPR to find out exactly who it was given to, for what legitimate purpose and how they were using it. On the first level, it was was shared with EIGHT companies, one of whom was a credit reference agency, which means it has been sold forever because they even allow alerts on subject records. Again I am working with the ICO to get this all reversed. Now I am pro-vaccine but this stunt made me decline the Vaccine because of the Vaccine Passports. I know they have my data anyway from when I was infected (before Vaccine was available) but I will not play nicely with people that use and abuse my data.
In the UK we were all told to grab our ankles and have so called Smart Meters, we paid £15bn for these for NO TANGIBLE BENEFIT, then people found their Smart Meter was turned into a pre-payment meter remotely by software switch. They had to pay a higher tariff. Soon the Energy Companies will introduce a scheme where they discount your energy if you are a good little boy and wash your clothes when they want you to, At the same time they will charge you more if you use the oven or make a cup of tea in so called “peak hours”.
Meanwhile they too are selling your usage data, apparently they can detect all kinds of information from your energy usage.
All of this data is nothing much by itself but when you merge it with the voters roll and the land registry and companies house data it becomes gold…
You might think that when you choose to Reject all those cookies you are stopping them, guess again and read the small print. No matter what you do the agencies all think they have a legitimate interest in your data, whether you consent or not. Some do not tell you when they still leave stuff on (e.g. linking devices on the same network) for example GMX / MAIL dot com. Others make you have to untick hundreds of boxes (e.g. Forbes).
Big Brother is not a Government it is Big Corporations, getting together and trading customers.
They will say it is because they want to show you more relvant ads, but it is far worse than that. Go watch he 1420 YouTube channel, a superb student project where they simply ask Russian people innocent questions. Some of the people think they are free, some accept they are not free but are OK with it, some want to say things but are scared because they know the power of the State machine there.
We have seen corporate blacklists, it happened in the building industry and even with holiday companies like Pontins, but with data you can be put on a blacklist with far more ease and so can your kids. That means they don’t get that job or that place at a college or whatever. In the USA it may mean you do not get that medical procedure, that mortgage that sponsorship or that travel visa. That is just the beginning.
Please name the “plenty of open source alternatives”
Google is your friend. Popular is Kodi. Check it out.
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True. Less and less time is spent on fixing issues with personal media.
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I just do not get it sometimes when pips are shocked when for profit capitalist entities do stuff for profit.
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To be honest there are NOT “Plenty” of options.
If you watch stuff outside your network I believe that rules KODI out.
There is definitely Jellyfin which is truly open source.
The client you use to watch will matter. Jellyfin doesn’t have the multitude of clients that Plex does.
It’s also certainly not as polished Plex either.
But the key thing it does have is reliability.
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I feel that this is a defensive tactic against pressure from big media companies. Being seen as THE provider of software for owners of “illegal” movie content. The torrent protocol and “Kodi-installed” devices on Amazon were previous targets, despite not doing or suggesting illegal activity.
Plex seems to be in a similar situation as others, and recent additions to the software seem to me to indicate that.
- Addition of a legal game service, paying content owners for access to their stuff? Check.
- Implementation of “Live TV” streaming options, with commercials regardless of your Plex Pass status? Check.
- Now this “Discover” option with “helpful” links to where movies you (or your friends who use it without knowing where it comes from) is akin to what some PopcornTime clones did when shut down. They turned into a “search” site for where to find legal places to view things.
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You can’t KNOW what nonsense there is with this feature, data is collected and once collected it is used for purposes which are not open source and documented. Some uses will not have even been thought of yet, but they will have the data.
Often with software we are told it is innocuous for example a Ring Doorbell, except they found it sending data to servers in China. Amazon / Ring said it was no problem and that they fixed it. So why are Ring so damn inistant on the geo location of my doorbell AND demanding that I connect my doorbell to an SMS when I am perfectly happy with email for two step verification. Why is there a mesh network between doorbells and other Ring devices, oh let’s not forget about Blink, also owned by Amazon. Now combine Alexa (at least they give you a pretend option to not listen).
There is no tin foil here, just inventing new ways to determine, persuade or control behaviour.
So when you subscribed to those fake diet pills they knew you felt you were fat, they knew you would fall for that nonsense. Offers so good that they are hidden and will only show if they are directed from a campaign, because they did suggest it was $30 but you got billed $400 so what happened. DATA is what happened, they knew your mental state, they knew more about you than you know yourself.
If you do not have the large library, then get Netflix and it will use a similar feature that was first called play somethign and it now called Surprise me. It P’e me off when they put any hurdle in front of me or if they move my continue watching section. It should be obvious, it is called an ON DEMAND system so I want it on demand, not after an ad or after scrolling. All of that is intrusive to me because I have a brain and I can think for myself. I might check an Amazon product called IMDB or a friend / family member might say “watch this”.
A library is about taking the content you want and having it in one place, I do not want to subscribe within Plex, we can’t subscribe to everything and there will be some stuff that we are excluded from because Apple outbid Netflix or whoever. That was the whole reason I dumped Sky over a decade ago. They would over bid on programming I was already getting free on state channels. Then they took Formula one so I dumped the BBC and save myself the license fee.
If Plex wanted to monetise, rather than selling our data they could create an email Plex Offers newsletter. No ID, just a discount for the customer and the company making the offer gets some new business which they hope to turn into repeat business.
You make a good point about disabling meta agents and search.
Exactly, every time they get some bright idea my kit stops working.
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I think we need to make a list of the must have options, for example grabbing the media for content, being able to share your content so you can watch something on your phone on the way home.
I remember working on a project on LA for several months and giving my kids access to just my PG13 library.
I showed a friend in LA what I could do with Plex and helped him set up his own headless server which he still uses to this day.
When a company sells it’s soul, then as a community we have to create our own alternative and that starts with making a list of the “must have features”. Who knows, some of the Dev’s may post some 5 year old source code for clients and server on a torrent somewhere.
When I think about it, I preferred the software back in 2015, it just worked. If I was on the road I could take my hard disk and connect it to my laptop using Plex on Firefox and I did not need an internet connection.
Nobody wants to have to develop Linux skills to install a server and client, they just want Plex to give the option to truly disable this nonsense and any other nonsense that phones home etc.
That is more worrying than I thought.
The think is most people like Plex for the convenience, I used to have a lot of CD’s then I ripped the songs I liked and stuck them on a device. I remember once Apple took my legal content and effectively disabled it, I then removed Itunes and do not even use my Iphone.to play music. It overstepped and forgot I was the daddy. I was lucky that I had backups. I remember Microsoft tried a similar stunt some years later. Shills the pair of them.
If Apple Music or Spotify or YouTube worked for me I might pay them, but whatever they do it does not work for me and I do not want them adding that to their databases.
Remember in the car when Vito Corleone tells his son about the trusted friend who will setup the meeting on their territory and they guarantee your security. That is kinda how it feels when Plex thinks it can decide what I find helpful. I do not like it with Netflix and I do not want it with Plex.
Everytime Plex adds a new feature I seem to have to find ways to hide it or disable it.
I like a nice clean interface, one of the reasons I went with Roku over Amazon device was Amazon put a hurdle to my content.
It comes to something when some Chinese tripe software is better than Plex even if they may spy and repurpose our device for DDOS
I do not use Plex every day, I tend to get lazy because of Netflix, but then I get bored and go back to my library. If Netflix can’t get this right what makes Plex think it can?
The other problem Plex has is that it is an App, so Roku is already trying to sell me all that crud, I have just 5 apps on Roku, Netflix, YouTube, Plex, Roku channel (never used) and Odysee. If Plex wants to make get higher up the food chain it needs to create a Plex 4k USB Stick.
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“It’s doing absolutely no harm being tucked away if you don’t like it.”
If the kids in the families that share my Plex server with find it, it will do a lot of harm.
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That’s the exact reason Plex haven’t roled out this feature for Managed Users aside server administrator.
I too only use Plex for home movies and music of which I am the sole creator and rightsholder.
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Is this true? I have spotty Internet. What happens now if I do a movie search, which apparently now also looks for alternate online streaming media services, when my Internet is down?
Unfortunately, shared users, with requested restrictions on my stored Plex content still have access to Discovery. So, their kids, which my friends are attempting to protect, are still able to see the non-kid friendly results in their searches and if they get into the Discovery page.
If Plex truly cares about empowering us, their customers, they would allow us the option to remove all the “Plex” pages from our menus or at least the menus of the users we wish to place restrictions on.
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My 5 years old kid saw yesterday a trailer of the horror movie Dawn of the Dead, simply by adding is show Noddy to Watchlist and scrolled down to recommandation!
I’m gonna make a proper post about it, it is beyond acceptable.
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Yes, I’m surprised this has not come up already. We use our plex account in our house as a family account, always have. Plex seams to not understand that many folks use plex this way and when they roll out features never consider shared family accounts.
I’m sure someone from plex will come back and tell us that we are using plex wrong and that we should have setup dedicated accounts for each person. This same thing came up when they tried to initially force the new continue watching 20 limit rule on us many months ago.
Do also come over to Fully Disable Discover & search results from Streaming Services (More Ways To Watch) if you want to cast a vote to have an option to disable it.
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Thank you for you concern. I voted yeasterday on your post to have the possibility to disable this feature, thanks you, I hope it will be heard!
Here is the link to the post I just made to warn parents about what can happen now on plex:
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