I agree, and haven’t disagreed with the points you raised. We very briefly discussed it last night but I had to sign out and couldn’t take part further.
Like all features there should be the ability to turn on and off, and the content rating issue in suggestions needs urgent fixing because people expect that to be adhered to.
I’m sure it’s been discussed to death but putting everyone into a Beta isn’t a good idea, if anything it means it isn’t a Beta.
Absolutely, I just wanted to be clear about what the other person was saying - content ratings isn’t a good enough limit is the issue. Thats why we curate the content with labels. They weren’t saying we should just ignore them.
I agree with this. All my Plex users have content restrictions based on labels, not content rating. As other have stated, there are many situations where PG or PG-13 movies are inappropriate for my younger viewers (especially PG movies from the 80s before PG-13 was created). Content ratings were not sufficient for what I wanted.
All new content on my Plex server is only available to my wife and me. Once we have screened the content, we add appropriate labels to the content that make the content available to other users of the Plex server.
This usually takes the form of acquiring new content, then watching the new content together as a family with the “target audience” (the “G” part of “PG”) with any appropriate discussion. Then if I feel it can be watched by them later on their own, then I add the tags. For adult users of my server, there are not usually restrictions, but have they have to live with what I deem appropriate for myself.
Exactly, also as it stands I believe Plex currently doesn’t allow for a combination of content rating and labels restrictions - it’s either only restrict by content rating, or only restrict by label
It’s either user restriction profiles (young kid, older kid, teen) or manually configure your restrictions (restriction profile „none“, individually set restrictions/what’s allowed based on labels/rating). Though IIRC only the rating profiles apply to Plex‘ video-on-demand platform, while custom restrictions apply per library type
The Younger Kid will allow TV-Y, TV-G, etc, applies to libraries as well.
However, to do custom labels, custom restrictions on ratings, or a combination of the two, you have to do Custom. I have no idea how that impacts Plex’s Video On Demand when custom is implemented, because I have online media sources disabled. But if Video On Demand requires the Younger/Older/Teen/None to be set, then the moment you do custom it would break that.
Which is real troublesome for anyone with Online Media Sources allowed, definitely. I would hope that they’d base on the type definitions (as its not per library, but Movies, TV, Music) which should apply just fine. However, that clearly wasn’t the case with Discover, so who knows.
Sorry… expanding that sentence didn’t actually make it clearer.
… was supposed to mean: it applies to libraries and online media sources (e.g. video on demand), while custom restrictions apply only to their respective (local/shared) library type (not online media sources).
I had included the IIRC because I haven’t checked that in some time.
Don’t give a 5 year old access to streaming services and then complain about them seeing something you don’t want them to? Plex is a media server, not a babysitter.
That wasn’t the situation actually.
There were no streaming services until this updated. It was a walled garden.
Plex broke that. And don’t bring in inappropriate and irrelevant comments like the last part of your post.
There were streaming services before, in the Plex provided Movies and Shows section. It was abstracted away a bit under the Plex umbrella but still…
You have an option to turn them off is the difference.
That was the first nibble, yes. Now they just tore a massive chunk out of customers. Not cleanly either, in alpha fashion. Now they are putting some of the chunks back with lots of stitches.
Could have been approached differently.
Online Media Sources could always be disabled.
So no, there were not.
That’s true, although not quite what you said before. I’m not that worried and reasonably confident it’ll get fixed. Of course I no longer have small children.
It is though - what my kid had access to didn’t include streaming sources.
Discover came out, that was no longer true.
Considering there is no way to turn it off now, and parental controls were ignored - I’m not at all confident in Plex. Which is why JF is currently serving up Sesame St, not Plex.
Update 4/7: Plex users have spoken out about an issue for children with the new Watchlist being a backdoor into watching restricted content.
Read more about what’s going on in these Plex and reddit threads. But for now, it looks like even if you have children accounts set up with restrictions and even only let them watch content you own, be aware they may see explicit content through the new Watchlist and Discover suggestions.
Some have suggested the new features should be opt-in, not automatically added for all users. Hopefully, Plex responds soon. In the meantime, be careful with Plex for kids!
Also this article
Plex’s no Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Week - Pocketables
April 11, 2022 - Paul E King
He is either a Plex forum user or is following this closely.
Good write up.
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