It’s insane to me that when I logged into my account today to watch my shows, I was met with a full screen uncloseable advertisement for the “Discover” update. I’m not interested in “Discover”, I’m not interested in full screen ads that prevent me from accessing my media on my server until it’s finished advertising to me and doing what ever silly settings update I will literally never use. I pay a premium for a service which is basically HTTPS redirect and tech support, not to “Discover” anything with anyone. I have other ways of doing that. So in long, stop doing what you just did or have an option for people like me to opt out of those stupid types of ads.
4 Likes
While I understand your frustration, I’d like to offer an alternative perspective.
This is a feature which has been in beta for more than a year. It was just rolled out to all Plex users. Many users on these forums have found it useful in beta and have provided feedback to improve it (some of which has been implemented).
While it would have been convenient for Plex to roll it out with a default opt-out or opt-in configuration, since most of the settings it exposes are non-binary, it seems appropriate that they allow users to perform a one-time initial configuration. I don’t consider this an ad; rather it’s a notification of a new feature which requires setup.
Had they not done this, many users would have been completely unaware that this new (to them) feature had been turned on, or was even available. They would have had some default configuration chosen for them which may or may not have been consistent with their wishes.
I personally found it mildly inconvenient to perform the initial setup, but I’m now sure that it will work the way I want. Contrast this with the way credit detection was rolled out; it was enabled server-wide on every server and library I had. I much prefer the choice.
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Personally I found it a major pain as on a mobile device it wouldn’t let me save my preferences at all so I couldn’t even get to what I was trying to do until I had accessed from a computer. All they had to do was put an X in the top right corner or something to let people skip it.
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That’s the rub isn’t it? No matter how good they make Discover I will never personally use it. And to be absolutely clear I’m not saying to abandon development or that I never want to see an advertisement for it(save it for announcements like anything). But it is just silly to me that I am accosted by a giant full screen ad and prevented from using my media until the ad completes what ever silly nonsense it is programmed to do. It takes less than 5 seconds to add a “remind me later” or “skip and do not notify me again” option. I’m glad Plex is developing features that some people want, but they shouldn’t expect everyone to care or interact with it. And again to be clear my issue isn’t with Discover, it’s their method of advertising I take issue with.
Accosted? Wow.
My post was not intended to discount your perspective, only to offer an alternative view. We could go round and round as to the definition of an advertisement, in this context. In the most strict definition/sense of the word, yes, this absolutely was an advertisement. But that could apply to almost any notification (being that a notification advertises that something has occurred).
This however, in my opinion, clearly serves more as a notification of “hey, this new feature exists, and it needs to be configured.” It afforded you the opportunity to ensure that it was set up to your liking (everything set private, I presume).
And again, I don’t necessarily like that I had to take a minute to set up my preferences before getting on with the business of administering my server (in my case, that’s what I was doing). But I much prefer it to some choices Plex has made in the past of just turning a new feature up to 11 and hoping folks would like it.
Anyway, don’t mind me. I find myself sharing my opinions much more freely than I likely should as I get older.
“Accost: approach and address (someone) boldly or aggressively.”
Unskippable full screen ads seems bold and aggressive.
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It’s inconvenient to set up a new feature like that when you had intended to turn on the TV and just watch something, but I would rather do that than maybe miss knowing it even existed.
Hello,
Please stop displaying full-screen ads for your products when I log in to my private server. It’s disruptive and impacts my user experience.
Thank you.
What are you talking about? I never saw ads within Plex?
(FAST Channels and content beeing the exception of course)
I assume they are referring to any Plex splash screen that tells you anything about any Plex features.
