How this is not an emergency hotfix is beyond me.
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Iām really glad that something is going to be done about this issue. After I found out, I was ready to switch to a different service because it really made me angry, that there is this content under my private domain and there is nothing I can do to hide it without taking the site down.
I hope it will be solved soon.
Saw my plex home page, found this thread, saw that you guys are not taking this seriously, unsubscribed from plex pass, switched to emby.
not sure why you donāt think weāre taking it seriously.
Basically because you are not. (or so it seems at least).
Itās almost 2 month and this has not been fixed and Plex employees argued in this thread basically that itās not a big deal, well, it is. That is why we think you are not taking it seriously. (You as in Plex inc. not you personally)
I am not sure you guys realise how big of a fā¦ up this is. You are hosting a frontend to your store (including advertisement for tidal) on other pplās domains, hw and resources without consent or even awareness. This is not what people want, we donāt pay you guys money to host your stuff and ads on our resources.
This is an emergency hotfix situation + āwe never do this again, we are sorryā - statement situation here. How can you not see that?
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First of all, as soon as this was brought to my attention, I raised it internally at the higher levels and we decided it needed to be fixed right away. The web portion of the fix was complete Dec 1st. The web portion and the server portion operate on different cadences, and the latest web release is pulled whenever server is released. So I think the web must have just missed server cutoff, but it will certainly be out in the next server release.
Secondly, I should clarify that there are no resources/hw/bandwidth being used here which otherwise wouldnāt be. If someone hits your IP at port 32400 (or whatever you have it mapped to) they will load the web app; this happens regardless of this issue or not. Given this bug, the web app (now running in the userās browser) connects from the userās browser directly to Plex servers. Your server isnāt in the loop anymore or providing any resources.
We get that.
I have looked at it in the dev console, some requests (not many) still go through to the webserver, after the intial load.
For example:
https://mydomain:myport/web/common/img/backgrounds/preset-dark2.24cb7f1a5e2d0102f05f3e59dfad9086.png or this:
/web/common/img/upsell/tidal-upsell-background.1386c7661d74345bfdaef323657c927f.jpg
Which is part of an ad for tidal served by my domain and resources. It even is named āupsellā
I get that this is negligible but that is not even the point, that is not why we are āmadā. It is more the breach of trust and the questionable decision making that lead to that happening in the first place, even if it was with good intentions.
I appreciate your explanation and the time you take to answer stuff like that in the forum personally when you probably have more important or more fun things to do, all of us appreciate this, but the fact remains.
It has been 2 month and it is still happening, when this should have been a hotfix relase.
So this was the (longer) answer to your initial question:
Again, thanks for taking care of this and a happy new year.
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I should have been more explicit: this was a mistake, a bug, something we just missed. There was no explicit decision made around it, or any intentions whatsoever.
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Hi Elan. A clear statement like this is what I desperately was looking for in this thread, while I was trying to decide if I should go through the trouble of switching to another media server.
I know that his puts more pressure on you guys to actually start doing something about it, but that is exactly what should be happening. When I saw that your status update was āItās in the pipelineā, I was done. Thatās what I say to my stakeholders when I want to backhandedly keep them at bay.
An ETA for the sake of other people in this thread would be awesome.
I personally appreciate @elanās transparency and honesty. We donāt need to chastise him any further. As a software engineer myself, I completely understand how complex software development and deployment is. Mistakes happen, itās the nature of being human and working within a complex environment.
Internally, hopefully they will have a retrospective on this to learn from the mistake and help evolve their processes to address it in the future. Thatās what iterative development is all about: Learning from mistakes, fixing them often, and communicating with customers.
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I guess Iām more honest than you are? 
When I said āit was in the pipelineā I meant parts had been completed (the web fix) and it just needed to move through our release cadence between web + server. I mean, I felt like I was doing a good job communicating, but obviously improvements can be made and I take it to heart for sure! Never stop improvingā¦
One month ago: āweāre aware of this issue internally, we agree itās not desirable, and are taking steps to address itā
24 days ago: āshould be in an upcoming server releaseā
19 days ago: āitās in the pipelineā
10 days ago: āstill in the pipeline or in beta server, iām not sure exactly whereā
Iām sorry itās taken so long to get out to you all!
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Hi elan,
I personally appreciate your willingness to engage with the community and address concerns. I donāt want to pile on whatās already been said in this thread but I feel like the fundamental of this āissueā hasnāt been correctly acknowledged-- that is, the fact that non-user content on Plex is made to look like user content and there isnāt enough visual differentiation between these two.
Now, Iām not accusing Plex of anything. And I completely understand and support Plexās monetization efforts. However, I feel like this tension will eventually come to a head as Plex eventually, inevitably gets more content partners involved and the amount of 3rd party content overwhelm the content of usersā own.
I canāt say whether making 3rd party content look like usersā own in the hope that weāll āease intoā them is a good strategy or not-- I donāt have the data to provide me with any insight. But I think most dedicated Plex users-- those with large libraries-- are most comfortable in ignoring, thus disabling 3rd party content altogether on their servers. And frankly thatās a ālose-loseā for everybody, isnāt it?
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I have to agree with Bjoure here. The problem is not this particular issue, itās that this issue seems to be in lockstep with other āfeaturesā, such as the non user āPlexā content popping up in places you donāt expect.
When I bought Plex Pass, I was interested in, and paid for, a significantly different vision. The aspects that sold Plex to me seem to now be an afterthought. Autonomy and Independence, guys. Seriously. Lean into that.
First of all I think itās a good discussion but probably needs its own thread, mostly to avoid confusing the original issue and losing information.
I know for at least my own use, I can āUnpinā non-user content to hide it. I donāt know if friends still see it when you share your library with them. If so, I think that there should be a way for me to disable that on my own server.
They do. I had user very confused by that.
Yes. 100% agreed.
Sadly, Plex is moving more and more away from what I need it for.
I see there is a new PMS release.
1.21.1.3876
But I donāt see any mention of this issue in the release notes, apart from:
- (Web) Updated to 4.47.3
So has the fix made it into this release?
@blim5001 from what I can see, NOPE!
You seriously donāt know why someone would think that? Did you even read the thread and, more importantly, the initial reactions from the Plex team? The only thing I can do is shake my head in disbelief.
Way to go in building trust in your brand.
Hmm, well that does beg the question what the heck is going on.
If the web fix had been completed surely this should be in the (Web) part of the new PMS!
i just got pinged by a member of the web team yesterday to let me know he merged the newest web release into the server, so itāll now make it out to the next server release.
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