are you telling me they can still I.D the content even with rounding off all the data they collect?
Sure. If you use for example their Plex Media agent, then you are pulling metadata right from their servers. Even though they are telling you they don’t know what’s in your library … all the metadata requests your PMS (its IP address) sends are right in their logs. They also know your credit card ID and your real name and can link that to the IP address of your PMS.
E voila …
@FreestyleStorm said:
are you telling me they can still I.D the content even with rounding off all the data they collect?
Yes absolutely. They know your credit card details, address (or country), server IP, every movie, TV shows or file that has been scanned succesfully by their meta agents. They know when you log in, when any of your users log on…
This is not necessarily a case of Plex “losihg its way”, although I agree with you - if that was not their intent, it sure is the reality today. However, I do think that you have to take a step back and look at all the features and development that has gone largely unfunded for the past decade with the Plex team.
Free (or nearly free with lifetime pass) Plex users was not just a promotional strategy. I think the idea was to tap the users for $$ just long enough to pivot to their eventual state of today, which is in practice, a user beta test community and data harvesting/honeypot for investors, who were the real customers all along. That’s why Plex never gave support, or the appearance of a customer focused product, like following user feedback or feature requests.
In summary, their trojan horse was made to be free and attractive for a reason. And here we are.
Yeah, as soon as I saw “News” show up in my app - which pushed my music library listing off screen - it really pissed me off. And not having the ability to remove or turn off the “feature” that I didn’t want in the first place just pisses me off even further! I spent 20 minutes going over the UI in my android app, and on my server looking for where to turn this useless piece of feces feature off, only to find that I wasted my time!
I primarily use my Plex app to stream my music through my phone to my car stereo while I’m driving, and 9 times out of 10 I’m in a bit of a rush. The way I had my library’s arranged on my server allowed me to easily pull up my music library without having to look at my phone after pulling up the app. The addition of the “NEWS” to the UI means that I am now forced to either rename my library’s so that my music library is higher on the list, or I have to look at my phone every time I launch the app and take the extra minute EVERY time to browse to my library and begin playing my music.
I am a PLEX Pass member, and I have made every one of my friends aware of PLEX, and managed to get a few of them to join as well. If I don’t see this resolved within the next two updates, I WILL being to push people away from this service.
@marcelhehle said:
Sure. If you use for example their Plex Media agent, then you are pulling metadata right from their servers. Even though they are telling you they don’t know what’s in your library … all the metadata requests your PMS (its IP address) sends are right in their logs.
Pulling metadata is a weak proof. I can pull whatever metadata just changing the search criteria in a “fix match” session, and there’s no proof AFAIK that once you chose the metadata that fits your media this is logged somewhere else than your personal PMS.
There’s no mention in the privacy policy about the collection of metadata when matching, of course metadata is exchanged and used, but not necessarily stored. Furthermore if you use TMDB or TVDB once the connection between PMS and them is created, Plex actually can’t monitor the ongoing activity
I said this in another post on here a long time ago.
Plex needs to hire a customer relations expert to deal with issues customers bring up because the current employees are just not doing it.
Also they need to hire one or more project managers who control what projects the employees work on instead of the admins dictating that out. Lots of stuff people want and the new stuff coming out is like … WTF when did we ask for that? It’s like the admins have their own agenda and will never listen to their customers.
Plex is one company I would not want to work for because it’s ass backwards of pretty much every other successful company out there. The owners/founders do not know how to run a business. They are basically “winging it”.
Sorry if this is harsh to the staff but it’s the truth.
Sadly, there is no freedom software alternative available. Emby is a joke compared to Plex at this current point in time and there are no hosters of Emby on planet earth, either, so you have to maintain your own on your own server.
+1 for being able to turn off news. I have no desire to use it. If I want news I’ll use the Live TV feature. It’s a waste of space on my screen.
