On the slim chance anyone from plex is actually listening here is another piece of feedback to the designers of this discover workflow within the plex development team.
I’ve all the discover items disabled along with sync of rating and watch state. However, if I look within my profile there is a Get Started section prompting me to add my first rating and to Discover something new. I’ve decided I don’t want these features which is why they are disabled so getting a continued prompt in the UX is bad design.
Honestly, the fact I even have a discover profile in the first place is a annoyance to me. I have plex account and have opted out of discover as its of no interest to me so why do I even have a discover profile ? I’d love to delete it so maybe give us that option in the future.
Thanks for the link! Very odd I was only able to see that setting from your link and not by going into the settings myself. If I go to the settings myself and not from that link, I don’t even have that setting as an option under “online media sources”. Weird!
In all my years of using Plex, I’ve never had any reason to look at other products. This Discover Together feature and the way it’s been rolled out has me unsubscribing from all your emails and looking at alternatives.
This needs to be off by default. ANY option that invades user privacy without clear prior disclosure and approval must be defaulted off. It may be ‘typical’ for software companies to push new features as enabled but that doesn’t validate the practice, it simply points to how this is an established crappy way to handle these sorts of changes.
I was not aware the information seen in emails today was even collected, stored, processed, and sent out. This is the opposite of what I wanted when I paid for a lifetime pass to support this project and I think it’s time to take the few friends I’ve connected and find a new solution or at least identify the minimal amount of open connections to plex one needs to run the system at home.
This is invasive. It’s the opposite of what Plex used to be.
All major creepiness of this invasive data collection aside, I agree with this about real names vs useless names that Plex uses. I have a number of users I have NO idea who they are anymore. Would implementing a “Nickname” field, or some other note field where I can put who they are be that hard? That should have bene there from the beginning. It’s like the people coding this don’t actually use it.
If you are going to tell me who is watching what, it would at least be nice to know who they are, otherwise this is just a pointless “feature” invading my privacy with no benefit to me whatsoever.
This is a MASSIVE invasion of privacy and can absolutely have very harmful real world consequences! This is the kind of thing that can end friendships, tear apart families, result in getting fired or even lead to physical harm.
As an example from the report I just got from my friends watch habits, I can see that one of my friends is apparently watching a ton of cheesy, soft porn stuff (think classic ‘skinemax’ fare) from some server (it’s not mine) or Plex channel, and I am 100% sure they would be mortified to know that I know this (and heaven forbid if their spouse found out! That would not go well for them).
Now replace this friend, who’s just enjoying their downtime with some cheeky T&A, with a teenager who may be having difficulty figuring out feelings about their sexuality and are just trying to explore by watching LBGT dramas to see if anything there resonates or can help them figure things out.
Suddenly, one of their intolerant friends or parents gets a detailed email report with a cheery title listing every little thing they’re watching, and decides to beat those impulses out of them because ‘not under my roof’. Or they get outed by a friend who thinks it’s just a funny joke to make but turns into teasing or bullying at school and causes them to harm themselves or worse.
This is a dystopian nightmare of a feature and I honestly can’t believe it’s been rolled out as opt-out like this. SHAME ON YOU, PLEX!
I hope this is rolled back immediately and a public statement of apology of some kind is made.
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Tagging @BigWheel here since they’re the official presence in this thread so far. Hopefully this gets attention and more importantly action from the people that can do something about it.
Except no one is forcing you to use Plex. You assume all risks to using software like this and your friend for example CAN turn the feature off. I would be more inclined to agree with you if you couldn’t turn it off, although still the same rules apply, it is YOUR choice to use software that you deem safe or not.
Regarding the outlandish kid coming out scenario… this isn’t a doctors office and its not Plex’s job to handle that. If you wish to be anonymous with your viewing tasks (also not considering the parents are probably already monitoring online stuff) then click the check box to shut it off.
When I started using Plex many MANY years ago, this was NOT in it. In the meantime they pushed it in, without asking, and started sharing. That is a “bad idea”. And should not have happened.
So when I started: I “deemed” it safe. Now, after actually leaking data, It seems it no longer is. And the leakage seems to be a default setting. Horrible.
Also, @plex We care. Plex is dear to us. So we are passionately speaking up about this, because it feels sooo much more like betrayal when it comes from a trusted, respected and loved app like Plex.
It really does feel like a loved one that cheated on us. And we are pissed about it. We would hate to see enshitification encroach on Plex territory as well.
100%. Taking this to its extreme it could be a suicide trigger. They may not be able to cope with what plex have done. The whole opt-in of this is terrible!
Plex is allowed to make changes whether its a change you like or don’t. Companies grow and sometimes to keep the lights on it might grow in a direction you don’t like. I don’t use any of the new features, although I am intrigued by Discover since I like Trakt personally, but until I actually know who is who (nickname field) I don’t use it. This type of feature I could have told you 10 years ago would be an expected progression. Did they handle the roll out properly? Nope, and most companies never do. Its all hindsight blindness.
But in a social media world, to think Plex wouldn’t try getting into it is willfully ignorant. They rolled out watching together a few years ago, it was clearly on a road map.
If it was me, personally, when launched all UIs would have been prompted with a screen that says XYZ is now enabled and if youd like to disable this new feature click here. It didn’t happen, is what it is. The emails, from my understanding though were disaled by default, so you wont be on the Weekly Report unless you opted in.
Not harming anyone? I have a bunch of users (small group of friends and family) unknowingly sharing their entire watch history with people they don’t know. And depending on their user name they are sharing that too. They have to go through a convoluted process to “un-share” this information they never knowingly opted in to. BUT that only stops sharing from this point forward. All the old watch list is still there with their user name!!! It doesn’t remove them. This is such a privacy nightmare and betrayal of trust. I now have angry users who are mad at me. I am no longer the admin of a small group of people I wanted to share some media files with. Not to mention hypothetically what if a personal plex server admin was sharing files in a legal grey area? Are you only sharing home movies? Now there is a nice email “paper” trail of content on a personal server.
