Testing the new Apple TV app and my initial thoughts are
1: I’m really happy to have the “next episode” button back in the player controls when shuffling a season or show!
2: Why the hell are there social-media like features being baked more and more into my personal media server?
This was unnecessary and creepy when it rolled out and we were all opted into email summaries of our friends media consumption. It isn’t improved by being able to scroll through peoples watch history in the profile > friends area.
This is just entirely unnecessary. It’s weird and voyeuristic at best and makes me think Plex is trying to get into the social media market space - which necessarily means commodification of personal data - at worst.
I understand a number of these features can be disabled in various, obscure, settings at the account and server level (in an obvious effort to make opting out unduly complicated) but still… no one asked for this. If I want to talk about a show with a friend I will, being able to check up on someone’s watch history is not a good conversation starter.
The rest of the app has its ups and downs for sure - it feels significantly less customizable, like plex no longer trusts users to curate their own experience - but this steady movement toward social stuff is really only making Jellyfin look better.
For me I really enjoy the social features and like to see what my friends are watching. They are enjoying it too! So there are folks that are linking this feature.
But we are looking very normal stuff. No Kamasutra themed movies …
Yeah, perhaps I’m a bit sensitive to this stuff given the state of privacy on the internet lately. Glad some folks are enjoying it thought.
I do wish it was something that could be more easily, and more completely, opt-ed out of. As a self hosted ecosystem, having social integrations that I didn’t have to setup myself feels like a real overstep from Plex. I’ve had a few folks reach out to let me know they wish it wasn’t a thing so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ not suer what the best solution is but it really feels like something that I as the host could be able to entire scratch off.
Completely opting out of this stuff is pretty straight-forward; in either the web UI or one of the Plex Desktop apps, click your avatar in the top-right and select “View Profile.” Then, for any of the hubs present, click the privacy icon to the right of it:
You can then set everything to private, et voila, no more sharing of anything, irrespective of the application.
Yeah ok, this is much more straight forward than the last time I checked in on any of this biz. Pretty sure my/my wife’s settings are correct but the new experience making watch history so easy to find caused a reaction in us for sure.
I still really don’t like this stuff / wish it was something individual hosts needed to add (wow I miss plugins) but this is better than it used to be for sure.
Thank you for sharing clear instructions, I’ll forward these to some of my users who have asked.
Taken from when we found out that Plex,inc is lying about opt-out of sharing viewing history with friends. CEO Keith took PE money, Keith has his entire corporate bonus on milestones of turning Plex into a social media company as dictated by Jason Chapnik.
So I love Plex. I have been using it for a decade. Have a lifetime pass. Have most of my friends and family setup to use it.
And this makes me both sick and angry. Social media is revolting. Turning my private watching into a way to line your corporate pockets is disgusting.
I’m glad there are competitors out there because if this trend continues I and everyone in my ecosystem will be switching.
Can we somehow request to NOT have any more social features or even roll back? I get that the CEO took PE money. I would be willing to pay more directly to Plex to have a private fully functional media server that respects my privacy and doesn’t try to exploit me and my family.
