Weekly review emails data leak

[velun]

I’ so feed up with all this crap Plex keeps doing in the latest years with all the “features” that I don’t want and don’t need. I’ve used Plex for 10 years, and it used to be something that helped me to play my content and share it with my friends and family. Now with each update I have more and more options to turn off or to configure very carefully because otherwise I get things I didn’t ask for and don’t want. And the fact that users are always calling me to ask why the movie doesn’t have subtitles or why it looks bad, and I have to explain to them that the movie is not mine and where to turn it off, is tiring. This latest crap it’s another example, that I have to explain to my family why they are getting those emails and why somebody can see what they watch and how they can turn that off.

For me, it’s clear that Plex is not going in the direction it started from and for which I bought it, so I installed Emby in parallel, and I’ll slowly start migrating my users to it.
Having a lifetime plex pass I’m guessing this is ok for plex, as they already got my money and they don’t mind me leaving.

[leemcneil]

Just to add to the long list of users posting here to object strongly to how this whole thing has been handled. I like many other certainly didn’t opt-in, yet details and viewing history were shared anyway.

Due to this, I’ve cancelled by Annual PlexPass subscription. One I’ve had since the subscription launched way back when.

I didn’t buy a lifetime subscription because I believed in the product and wanted to support the developers. I’ve been using Plex since Barkley the dog was a feature in each update/release notes and the very early builds on OSX.

I no longer believe in the product if you are doing stuff like this.

[VJmes1]

Firstly, I appreciate the respone from Plex itself surrounding the rollout of this feature, it has confirmed my decision to end my PlexPass subscription after nearly 10 years:

Let’s go through this response:

Discover Together is Opt In

When someone opened Plex for the first time after Discover Together launched on November 1st, they saw the following screens (note: this only applies to people who were not in the Discover Together Beta. … The last screen allows you to choose your desired privacy settings.
…

This statement, and the accompanying screenshot completely contradict each other. Users upon opening Plex are presented with a four-page modal that has to the clicked through to the last page, where a number of sharing options are enabled if the user does nothing but select finish.

Either Plex is being disingenuous about what it considered to be opt-in, or is being willfully ignorant of it. At the very least this is an obvious example of a UI dark pattern.

I’m not willing (nor should other users) to give Plex the benefit of the doubt here, given the amount of UI work that has gone into the service over the last decade. Not to mention that it’s well known that 95% of users do not adjust from default settings.

Discover Together + Syncing Watch State and Ratings

Last year we added the ability to Sync your Watch State and Ratings with Plex. This enables a movie or show to be correctly marked as watched wherever you see it on Plex (Plex Media Server, our free Movies & Shows catalog, or Discover).

This feature is disabled by default and users must opt in to start syncing.
…

Again, another dark pattern, notice which button here is being nudged/highlighted.

This time however, it’s for a more innocuous-sounding feature like syncing your watch state, which has now been modified and shoe-horned into this new feature.

I commented in my original post how Plex shoe-horned in it’s media sharing feature into a “friends” feature which has subsequently also been shoe-horned into this on-by-default feature,

Week In Review Emails

Last week we started a new weekly email series intended to highlight your friends’ activity on Plex. The information contained in these emails is accessible from within Plex’s Discover source in the Activity Feed based on your friends’ Privacy Settings.

This email was enabled by default and caught some of our users by surprise. Since these emails are intended to summarize activity from your friends and don’t contain Plex curated content, they are managed by our transactional email channel and NOT our Marketing email channel.

An interesting aside to this, is the one positive action Plex took to announce a privacy-impacting new feature to most of the userbase was sent by accident:

The upshot from this is users are at least aware now of a feature nobody really asked for.

Adult Content / Porn

Some users are concerned that any adult content they watch will be shared with their friends. Discover Together relies on the current Plex metadata agents to match community activity to the appropriate title. Some of our metadata sources do include some adult films, but these have been flagged as adult in our metadata database.

While exposing the porn habits of users is the most obvious and egregious example of the privacy-implications of this feature, and Plex has taken steps to mitigate it. There are plenty of other possible scenarios around the consequences of this feature.

The viewing history of LGBT youth in a household of less-than-supportive parents could be made inadvertently available, teenage friends of someone who’s previously shared their library could have an avenue to bully someone for their movie tastes, or conservative grandparents starting a fight over the Christmas table around the woke Hollywood agenda being shown to their grandkids.

All situations which at best can make things very awkward at best, thanks to a feature like this rolled out just in time for Christmas 2023!

I haven’t even touched on the potential legal consequences from jurisdictions that have attempted to regulate the scourge of dark patterns, data harvesting and anti-privacy data policies. I’ll leave that commentary to the more legally inclined.

As I mentioned in my previous post on this, Plex has been a fantastic application for myself, one that I’ve happily supported for many years. Given the roll-out of this feature and the “response” to criticism, it seems quite clear now to become another enshittified web platform, where the users are the product, not the customer.

Well I was a Plex user, and a paying supporter too. Guess I’ll go elsewhere.

[lswank_gmail.com]

User of Plex since as far back as I can remember. Plex Lifetime Pass for nearly a decade.

Plex hasn’t been doing well in general for me, and this will be the final nail in the coffin. Maybe if I get an email saying “We’ve rolled back this feature! We realized you didn’t want it!” I’ll consider firing up Plex every once in a blue moon. Otherwise, I’ll actively recommend against it.

Please @ me when the class action lawsuit begins.

[IsaacOlsen]

Just came to say that this “feature” is another absolute stupid decision! Please Plex stop with this push to alienate everyone who uses your software. Maybe focus on the features people are requesting instead of this relentless pursuit features NO ONE WANTS.

[jpboivin]

Plex is accumulating strikes with me… The new (broken st the time) agents that were aggressively pushed. All the new features that clutters everything except if you opt out, and now this privacy issue…

I get that they need to monetize their users somehow, so I get some of the new features. I tend to disable them, but hey, if some people use them, that’s good. But this one is bad, and the fact that they still try to say that they did nothing wrong in the rollout is even worse.

I got the opt-out privacy screens, so I’m a lucky and rare user who properly hidden my activity from the start. My parents, as non-technical people, didn’t. So, I got that weekly email….

Plex decided to automatically subscribe me to a new email. Plex decided to automatically friend all the people I was sharing my server with. Plex decided to make the privacy settings opt-out and easy to misconfigure.

I can’t imagine it was greenlight without anyone seeing issues. This is basically a voluntary data/privacy leak and I can’t imagine this is legal in some countries like EU. I hope to see a better response from Plex, or as others have said, might be time to start looking for alternatives.

[d2freak]

Can you people at least stop saying that nobody wanted this.

I did. My friends did. We use it frequently. I have this weird feeling that we’re not alone.

You guys are making a huge deal over this.

[avtechie247]

because it is a huge deal. it’s a huge deal because it’s so privacy invasive. Plex has lost their way. They’ve forgotten what made their product great at its core. I’m glad you and your friends use this feature, but you could have turned it on manually instead of them just forcing it on everyone except what i assure you is the minority.

[fog673]

It is exceptionally clear that the issue is not with the feature itself. Rather it is the poorly communicated, poorly handled, and poorly designed rollout.

However, the feature does seem misguided and profit driven to me, personally. I recognize some people might be interested.

[LocLaMenace]

+1 from the silent community

[stonecold913]

Came here to say that this as an opt out feature is terrible and another in a long string of “features” having me looking into alternative solutions to hosting my media library. I haven’t been using plex for a long time because of opt out “features” that keep piling up.

[VJmes1]

I was probably a bit loose with my words saying no one was asking for this feature, some folk would like a feature like this, but given the response most don’t.

The great thing about an opt-in feature is people who might like it can choose to turn it on.

There’s nothing wrong with the feature itself, however changing the functionality of existing features and then tying them into an on-by-default is extremely poor.

To then turn around and gaslight your users about what opt-in actually means and hide behind the we were testing this for a year, didn’t you notice? talking point, all while only accidentally notifying your users that you were actually doing this? Pretty inexcusable.

[dudeman27]

I’m dropping Plex. This is inexcusable.

[menem]

Those screens default to sharing with friends. So: You need to change the default, and that makes it Opt-Out if you do not want it. The opposite of what you claim.

Remove this non-feature.

[xInsertx]

I don’t agree with how this was handled - especially the defaults on that “Your in Control” screen (which id argue is pretty obvious shadow pattern tactics) and does not actually explain any of this email stuff either - so there are likely many people who were caught out by this just because that wasn’t communicated properly.

I am a fairly private person - I do rmbr seeing this and being like “nope” and setting it all to private.

IN SAY THAT - I do wonder how many people are also butt hurt because they skipped through all the screens without reading it. Providing what is outline here is true (Discover Together: Public Release - #3 by PlexInfo) and its impossible to bypass the screen - i do feel like a small percent of onus is on users for apply the next-next-next mindset.

Honestly - like most I suspect - I stuck around for the better polished apps (which I think most would agree is true) - but I think most people have been seeing the writing on the walls for a while now and looking/testing at alternatives. Its pretty clear plex don’t care - they are moving in a very specific direction (possibly because of VC pressures) so people just need to do whats best for themselves.

Edit: I should note - I do agree the defaults on the “Your in control” screen should have leaned more towards a opt-out for existing users. There should also have been way more detail on the email part.

Edit2: Can someone also confirm how this affects “Plex Home” users? I haven’t seen much in this regards from my general browsing.

Edit3: @VJmes1 You post was really detailed - so major props to that. Also loved the Mulan reference =)

[bananafranco]

Oh boy, reading this makes me feel glad they forced my hand with the hetzner debacle a couple of weeks ago and I switched over to emby (minus a little plex-instance for music/audiobooks only)

[herman_munster]

@seansullivan

I just wanted to remind people again that Jellyfin exists. If we are going to enlighten Plex that their behavior is unacceptable we need to show it by making their revenue and user numbers drop. This is the only way a company will course correct.

problem with jellyfin is that, whilst the server is great (with some caveats), the client apps are dogshit.

[ipw781]

@BigWheel

It was in beta for whoever wanted to try it since July of last year

The emailing “friends” about their activity was very much NOT in the beta. If it had been, you wouldn’t be seeing so much fuming in this thread. Such a big change clearly should have been tested before just turning it on.

[ipw781]

The biggest one preventing switching away from Plex for me and my users is the lack of Plex Meta Manager or an equivalent to build trending/popular collections of movies & shows and display on the home page. If there was a feature like this for either Jellyfin or Emby (which I already paid for Premiere) I’d move over permanently!

[herman_munster]

i keep an instance of jellyfin server running (just in case), but as an appletv user jellyfin has no useable client app - the offer Swiftin but it’s borderline unusable with no plan to make it anywhere near useable by the looks of it.