Well I attempted to leave a comment on the article itself but it was removed. I guess my comments were too harsh.
Plex developers, you need to set Discover Together’s features to private by default. Have you learned nothing from companies like Facebook who were over enthusiastic of sharing user information without their approval? Come on now, learn from those mistakes.
Your blog comment wasn’t removed
Thank you for the feedback I’ll pass it along
+100000000 the feature is stupid to begin with and will probably only add to my growing desire to leave Plex behind, but the fact that it didn’t release as default private reeks of Plex getting ready to start data mining and selling our use data. Is there even a way to disable it all together?
You can set your privacy settings as you want in your account settings and you can disable other Discover settings in the Online Media Source settings for your account. There is info on how to in the Discover Source and Profile articles linked in Blog or the Forum announcement
I think the point to be made is that when a new feature is pushed out that involves data sharing, by default, it should be off.
It needs to be disabled by default. It’s as simple as that.
Your user’s privacy needs to be near the top of the priority list for your product. Users are bothered enough when they learn that the administrators can view what they’re watching, Forcing that activity to be visible to all other users in the pool is 10x worse. This was such a bad decision and once again something no one was asking for.
Your activity is private by default. It will not change until you make a decision in the popup asking what you would like those setting to be. The setting displayed in the onboarding popup are not what they currently are when it appears
No, it’s NOT. When it turned on, all mince came up as “Friends” and Friends of Friends.
Mine came up as Friends - seems the rollout was different for different users.
I then had to hunt down the settings locations plus a new one in a separate location (mentioned elsewhere on the forum).
Edit - how it should be and how mine will remain
I saw those settings too. I think @BigWheel is saying that until you proceed past this point, they are probably set to private. The thing that may be tripping us up is that the default SELECTION for each was “friends” or “friends of friends”. If you select and submit on private for all these, it probably changes nothing, since they are already set to private.
If this is not the case, I want to know.
This is the worst experience.
I sit down to dinner to watch a show and instead I find myself turning off a bunch of sharing features that I never want.
This is why I use Plex over some ■■■■■■ network’s app.
And now every show has some bullshit at the bottom about me being the first of my friends to watch it! With a little trophy that I’m supposed to earn. ■■■■ off! Jesus christ.
My partner said, full of sadness, that she wishes that the app team had “spent their time disabling the dumb feature that puts your show in the corner so that it can show a preview of the next show, rather than coding this bullshit.” Literally she said that and she has no idea about tech.
Plex. What are you doing. Why. WHY.
Could be a bug but it also appears you cannot FULLY disable this rubbish as I’m seeing a share link and workflow to share content within my clients even after this has all been disabled.
I created a thread about it here → Share With Friends Link Shown even after ALL Discover Social Integration is Disabled
Should be off by default with a notification to say about turning it on if you want to. Instead I had to turn all features to private and disable a second option in a different menu.
The issue of what data you collect and what you want to do with it is very serious to many users. Plus you just have the general annoyance of adding social media features to something that should be turn on, play and forget about the world.
Seeing a lot of concern and confusion in these comments… That should be telling you guys a lot about this experience.
This is definitely NOT private by default.
The “Who can find your account” is not set properly and that option isn’t even available unless you actually GO TO that page.
Why isn’t it just set to “Friends Only” anyways by default?
Are usernames visible, in the case if I look at “Person X” who made everything public, would I be able to see “Person Y” (who set everything private) just because they are friends of “Person X”?
If anyone needs it, the page itself is here: https://app.plex.tv/desktop/#!/profile/edit
Thanks, that’s sneaky indeed. 1) its placing outside of your main plex account, under the profile and 2) set that ANYONE can find your account. Come on plex, do better !
I have turned everything to “Disabled”, yet “Activity by you” and “Be the first of your friends to watch this!” still shows up on both Apple TV and Roku players.
@one_underscore You can still see your own profile and data whether or not you choose to let others see it. Any of your activity is populated from having Watch State Syncing enabled.
Maybe I am unclear what you are referring to
Watch State Syncing is disabled. These labels began showing up beneath the description on the detail pages of movies and TV episodes yesterday or the day before.
Being constantly reminded of how much user tracking is going on makes me want to completely stop using Plex.
Do you have Display Activity from my friends on Details pages enabled in your discover settings for that account? https://app.plex.tv/desktop/#!/settings/online-media-sources
