100% agree. You should send plex,inc a $10,000 invoice for doing their job for them. Just think about how many hours the 2 plex employees that were assigned to jump on this grenade could have been doing something else that provides value for users?
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Agree, this is effectively a phishing scam.
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The Register – “Plex gives fans a privacy complex after sharing viewing habits with friends by default”
TechHive – “Plex users rage over Discover Together privacy concerns”
Futurism – “USERS HORRIFIED AS STREAMING SERVICE TELLS FRIENDS AND FAMILY WHAT THEY’RE WATCHING”
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“Plex Emails Yo Mama!?” Linus and Co. outline the problem:
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Thank you! This would have prevented people from being upset. If it were a purely optional feature we seek out to enable, it’s fine. Could be some fun with trusted friends.
As it is now, it’s going to result in a lot of embarrassment, shame, and legitimate problems between friends and family.
Privacy should always be default.
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Some good reporting and podcast discussion from 404 Media on the Plex problem:
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Please stop spreading this nonsense. The user did not affirmatively elect to do anything. They were presented with a non-optional, non-dismissible pop-up box blocking further use of the product already paid for; and, if the user makes no affirmative changes, on hitting the one and only button that allows continuation onto the product, were enabled for these features.
Please understand that I know exactly what you are trying to say, and that if this was the first day these issues had ever arisen your presentation might sound reasonable. But as an a society and industry we are many years into these issues, the existing regulatory and legal frameworks have accepted definitions, and according to those definitions this is an opt-out onboarding experience.
But, if you and/or Plex want to continue to be deceptive about this, I will concede that the experience is “opt-in” in the sense that “the user opted in to continue using the product vs. asking for their account to be cancelled” or “the user opted in to continuing to breathe.”
Btw the circled phrase you are trying to champion (“The settings below are currently set to: Private”) it itself deceptive. I believe this sentence only appears when the user’s profile does not yet exist, meaning that rather than saying they were set to private, it would be more accurate to say they had not yet manifested into existence and the user has expressed no previous preferences. Thus this dialog is establishing the initial state of these settings, and that initial state created without user action to change the presented defaults is opted-in (by Plex, not by the user.)
It is further deceptive in that at this point the user does not know that “Friends” means “anyone you have created an access account for”, but that’s another topic.
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The next paragraph of mine which you cut from that quote goes on to explain that Plex’s approach to all of this was, in fact, dirty.
Dark Patterns aren’t cool. The EFF even has a site to report them: https://darkpatternstipline.org
However, the ones who should be truly worried about the privacy implications of this are the Plex server owners. And we’re theoretically tech savvy people who should be able to avoid falling for stuff like this.
People using our servers have never had any true privacy. We can use Tautulli and Plex Dash to track their every move.
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We clearly both agree it’s “dirty”. The reason I’m pressing the point is that it appears you believe that Plex is technically within the bounds of say EU’s GDPR opt-in requirements. I am saying (as a non-lawyer) that I believe they are out-of-bounds of that requirement and subject to reprisal. It’s a big difference.
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Actually, that is very different to what is discussed here.
Users are exposed to not only tracking of watched content (by Plex and other users) from the server but elsewhere. If IMDB and the other database used, can identify it
OK, I see I can disable it.
But why the hell wasn’t this an opt-in feature instead of opt-out? Plex really dropped the ball on this.
Or maybe they just realized that pretty much no one would ever intentionally blast their friends with their personal watch history as part of some spammy weekly newsletter they never asked for.
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HIFI – “Plex shares your history: New “Discover Together” feature receives criticism”
meIObit – “Plex shares users’ watching habits without asking”
LaVanguardia – " Do you watch adult content on Plex? Your family and friends will know soon"
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They are not cool. And i think a lot of users feel tricked, given the sentiments.
Privacy Zuckering" – named after facebook co-founder and meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is a practice that tricks the user into sharing more information than they intended to. Users may give up this information unknowingly or through practices that obscure or delay the option to opt out of sharing their private information. California has approved regulations that limit this practice by businesses in the California Consumer Privacy Act
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Not cool!
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That it’s opt out is the worst and dumbfounding.
But decades? Are you a time traveler?
If you mean the OP, he is into his second decade on the forum so plural is right 
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I’ve been a plex lifetime pass user for decades yes. I’m old ok?
My Plex has been “up” for about that time as well. Never was much of a Forum go-er, but that “somehow” changed recently.
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I’ve lost faith in Plex. I’ve given them the benefit of the doubt for many years, but they continue to disappoint, each time demonstrating an almost sociopathic apathy for people’s views.
In this case, they haven’t learned from all the complaints from previous ‘default-to-opt-in’ failures.
Their continued lack of corporate responsibility means I’m out; they have been forgiven once too often.
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Your post is WRONG. My 4 year old never chose to share his watch details, I only saw this now when I logged in with his account.
And why is he opting in to receiving social media spam from you, when he never selected those items?
This is highly problematic and certainly illegal in various jurisdictions. You are really digging your grave more and more with all these disturbing privacy violations. I will report this!
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