huh, I just enabled discover to see if I could get rid of the numbers in the counters on my profile, and good grief, and the discover people tab presents me with friend suggestions! Some of them seem to be friends of friends, but others are just random users, why on earth would I want to add random unknown people as friends?
How do I convert friends to sharees? Apparently that exists. All I see is ‘friends’ and ‘friends with library access’. If being a friend means their watch behavior could possible be sent in a mail, or my watch history could end up in their mailbox, I’d rather not have any friends.
Trust in the product is gone. Already Plex Pass member, otherwise subscription would be cancelled immediately. That being said, still going to look for alternatives. If anyone has any good ones, let’s all move 
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If you go to your profile and click on a friend you should be able to unfriend them from there.
Plex needs to roll out updates RIGHT NOW with all of that set as default. That is the bare minimum THE LEAST that should be done to correct this.
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You just enabled it by default. What the hell. It is none of any of my friends business what me or my family watched all week. Screw you guys.
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I have 25 users/friends on my personal plex server. 13 of them are sharing their watch history etc. 12 are not. The 12 who are not are not active users. The 13 who are sharing are all active users. I asked 6 of them if they opted in to sharing this information. All of 6 said the “DID NOT.” 4 of them sent me text messages and screen shots asking me “What the hell!?” when they got the “week in review” emails. A couple are very mad at me. I guess I have to reach out to all 13 and ask them to un-share through the convoluted process!? Like I’ve said in other parts of these forums. I have taken my server down until this is rectified and we have admin over what can be shared about our personal servers. This is a disaster. I’ve been so happy with PLEX, even with the added layers of cruft I basically ignore. This one can not be ignored and has so many unintended consequences that are terrible. Does anyone have Plex alternative suggestions?
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This whole thing just seems like Plex is trying to package itself for sale and boost itself as some sort of social platform.
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That was my EXACT thought a couple weeks ago when they started rolling this ■■■■ out.
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Does setting everything to private in 4. mean that I will not be included in the emails sent to my friends?
I ask because I already had everything set to private except for my Watchlist (friends only). The email my friends got included an item I added to the Watchlist (fine) but ALSO included a section ‘Trending with’ and added a random show I’d actually started watching. Despite my watch history NOT being shared with friends. Is there some setting that means ‘never include me in emails to friends’ - as the settings only seem to prevent me receiving the emails, not stopping me being included in emails to those who still have the feature turned on. Arhh!
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Add me to the upset users crowd, not at the features per se, but certainly at the response to the community.
The biggest issue for me is the incredibly tone deaf responses from the employees, engaging in what amounts to victim blaming of clearly upset folks who’s privacy setting were very clearly not what they thought/expected they were.
Additionally, the locking of threads and comment censorship are also quite the cause for concern, even in the cases where the comments aren’t in violation of any of the community guidelines.
Very disappointing there’s been no formal response, just a lot of condescending ‘clearly you just don’t know how it works, go change these settings that are spread out all over’ responses from employees that imply the users are the problem here and not the poor implementation and lack of communication.
The product manager that owns this feature needs to take some accountability here and own this situation and the response.
Regretting spending money here to end up being the product, the whole idea of taking money in exchange for services is that the user and their data are NOT the product. I expect to be exploited if I’m receiving benefit of something for which I’ve paid nothing, but that’s not the case here.
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No, you guys screwed up you fix it correctly. Set it default all off and respect privacy opt in if they want
I’m not jumping through hoops so you can sell our data.
We Paid for the app, WE are not your product. Fix it send an emergency update if you still have any respect for customers.
Else we will have to take actions.
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I am the DPO for a large financial organisation. What I don’t know about GDPR (and the UK Data Protection Act 2018) you can write on the back of a postage stamp.
It is almost certain that in implementing this new functionality (and the resultant data collection & sharing) Plex have not complied fully with the UK or European legislation. I say ‘almost certain’ because I do not have the time to dive into this to gather the required evidence. They have certainly broken the spirit of the legislation which is to ensure that user data is used fairly, transparently, lawfully and for transparent and specific purposes. The single most important thing that underpins GDPR is “informed, explicit consent” (unless you can demonstrate that you don’t need it). In terms of redress, and if Plex do not fix this, then a complaint to the ICO (UK) [or the relevant supervisory authority in your EU state] can be made. It would be far preferable if Plex came out with a statement explaining the issue and what they intend to do about it.
This is, quite rightly, an emotive issue but we need to stay civil in these forums and keep the pressure up for this to be addressed by Plex management.
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Anyone who is an EU citizen please report this to EDPS and your local national rep found below
EDPS
European Data Protection Supervisor
Rue Wiertz 60
Office: Rue Montoyer 30, 6th floor
1047 Bruxelles - Brussel
Tel. +32 2 283 19 00
Fax +32 2 283 19 50
Email: edps@edps.europa.eu
Website: https://edps.europa.eu/
Member: Mr Wojciech Wiewiórowski - European Data Protection Supervisor
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You’re kinda thinking of PECR there for B2C businesses and marketing. GDPR does not have a single most important thing, let alone one single or best Legal Basis.
Well, you know you screwed up when you make it on Tech News. Where’s the rollback Plex? Where’s the statement of who got fired for this? Silence is not golden. Actions, not words.
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Exactly this. Poor UX. Completely asinine.
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This is done intentionally. If they gave a damn about paying customers they would make this OPT in. Instead its a web page for one thing, a sub menu of a sub in another and when they make a change it will all reset with new more gibberish language that does not describe it in proper English.
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The fact that you made this opt out when users have already opt out of these things and pretend this is normal is a so telling lol
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Why am I having to post about this? Why should this even be a concern I have? There is no server manager here who wants this. This just puts liability on me. I’ve had users come to me and ask why they received emails about what others are watching and them asking me if I am seeing what they are watching.
To be clear I know as the server owner I can see in real time or via historical reporting what they have watched, but that is for the server owner to have for troubleshooting purposes. Not for the general user base to be able to see. This is a clear violation of trust. There is no reason this couldn’t have been rolled out as something the user must manually go and opt-in to.
This behavior is unacceptable. You should be ashamed.
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You know I even continued to pay the yearly Plex Pass cost just so they would have recurring revenue for years. I only just switched over to Permanent Plex Pass. I did that (yearly plex pass) and hoped others would do the same so that they would have revenue to prevent this kind of behavior. I hope the management is seeing this backlash and knows that as soon as Jellyfin becomes good enough I will leave.
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