I can’t believe Plex employees keep insisting this was an opt-in feature, it seems they make software and they do not understand what opt-in is. If you already unilaterally put me IN and I can later choose to be OUT then it is not opt-in. The correct way to introduce this was to introduce it deactivated and tell the customers you could activate it. I of course understand why you did it the way you did it, but at least have the pants to own what you did.
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I think Plex is selling our watch data as I’ve started receiving adverts saying things like ‘hey movie lover why not order a pizza now’
I don’t have any proof but it’s got to be a reason for the social element after all it’s how Facebook works. It’s not for the love of it.
I dont have any porno on my plex server but I can understand people not wanting a feature pushed onto them as a default opt in.
Please plex sort it out and get back to your roots.
It basically shows they are going to sell your watching habit’s to advertisers and that will be the business model moving forward.
I might actually go read the plex terms of use to see what it says about who OWNs the data I generate on MY server.
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Add my name to the list of people who are angry about the decision to add this “feature” it needs to go away, it needs to opt everyone out and let users who want it, add it deliberately.
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The most bizarre thing is there is a 7 steps post from a Plex Employee explaining how to opt-out of this so called :“opt-in” thing. You can’t make this things up if you tried.
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A few hundred comments on this forum won’t make Plex lose 75% of its users! Nonsense! I’m sure that the vast majority of current Plex users have nothing to do with this controversy, never browse these forums and find no problem in sharing these informations as they are constantly swimming in an online social tide, here or elsewhere…
And good luck if you want to switch to Emby or Jellyfin, as the former hasn’t received any significant updates in over a year, while the latter is at a complete standstill. And their client apps are terrible, with no real support. Not to mention the many basic functionalities, essential to maintaining a consistent server, that are absent from these two apps, and the horrible bugs that plague them (tested long and hard over the years).
In short, it’s either Plex and nothing else, despite all its current shortcomings, for client/server management, or Kodi+nfos for an old-fashioned stand-alone application, with no risk of personal information leaking out.
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Whilst you are probably correct that a few hundred comments/users on a forum won’t be an issue, most are running servers supporting users.
The numbers grow quickly.
Add to that potential issues with data privacy and the matter becomes very important.
Edit - oh and I’ve been running JF in parallel with Plex for some time and it does all I need TBH and more stable with more customisation and less of the ‘features’ that Plex has dropped on users that are of no value to me (mostly those centred around Discover).
I’ll keep using Plex for now, mainly for side projects such as Plexdash, Plex HTPC and Plexamp.
Used to run XBMC prior to moving to Plex a decade ago.
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Plex, common and apologize and if you don’t know how go to a pr agency, but please say something in an official way.
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It’s already picked up by several major tech news channels so this will already be reaching millions of users. Just Google it and set to news filter there are at least 10 now.
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Wake up to yourselves Plex devs.
Roll back this ridiculous “feature” and tidy up. Make your bed.
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Just wanted to add that I would also like to be able to disable this email feature from the server side. We all have enough spam emails to be getting along with and this is not helping especially when its privacy related.
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Why is this Watch History listed here if I don’t have Sync enabled? Should it be listed here regardless? How does Plex know I watched this if I don’t have sync enabled?
Is this a separate setting?
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This isn’t about selling your data. I would hazard a guess that the Plex team and organization have finally caved to court pressure and are making moves to record the filenames and metadata info to finally unmask Plex server owners in court.
When anti-piracy services run sting operations, they usually do so quietly while gathering enough data to unmask users. They come in by secret court order, change something on the backend or in the code. And then push that code to the end users of said project. From there they wait and gather as much private info as possible. Once they have this data, they move fast. Usually through massive numbers of lawsuits. Ask yourself, how many server owners out there are there? And then how many users are on those servers?
What do you think the chilling effect would be if we saw 100,000 people get sued in court? They have your usernames, your email addresses, your IP addresses, and now they are going for when, where, and how much media you have watched.
Plex is compromised.
Pray this is only about your data.
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It’s definitely a guess. Nothing that has been introduced in ‘Discover Together’ requires any additional data collection beyond what has been collected for a long time now. And some of that data collection previously required (and still does) the end user to opt in to the collection.
If this is all about collecting data to unmask server owners in court then it’s a very long game they’ve been playing. I also fail to see the benefits in putting resource time into creating functionality like Discover Together when it would be completely unnecessary for what you’re claiming is Plex’s nefarious purposes.
I’m seconding this as well, I was unsubscribed to all previous emails from Plex and once I got hit with this new Weekly Review and went to shut it off, every single box was checked for me to receive all email marketing Plex offers despite turning it off in the past.
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This is also something I don’t really understand. Why should syncing my watch state for my personal use so that it functions as you mention in your last sentence be linked in any way to a social feature? That should be another completely separate opt-in setting that tracks separately from sharing.
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Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! All is well. All is fine. Your piracy data is safe with us!
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The people at Plex who made this decision are certainly not in this thread, just a few Plex employees who were voluntold to come here and spill word salad trying to call this opt-in, when anyone with a few braincells can see it is a an opt-out flow. If they aren’t going to roll this back asap, the only option is to abandon ship - Plex is relying on everyone’s server friends as a way to expand their reach to paid solutions, so until they feel that pain they aren’t going to do anything except ignore people here.
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So Plex using a copyrighted image in their own publicly available data (and being taken to court over it) means we should all believe Plex is secretly working with ‘anti-piracy’ services and has introduced completely unnecessary new functionality to collect data it was already collecting?
Yeah, that all sounds completely reasonable…
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You do understand that nobody is happy with this. The fact that you have to defend a feature to this length should be a huge sign that you screwed up. I’m going to give emby some market share. I’ve felt no need to move on from Plex until now.
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What the actual ■■■■, Plex?
I did not consent to having my personal viewing history shared with my friends, and do not want my friends history shared with me. The fact that I have no way to block others from getting these emails with my history is a big problem for me, and has me evaluating alternatives to plex.
This is a HUGE misstep.
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