I’ve been thinking about this more and more. According to the sidebar, this community is “A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don’t control.” Based on that I don’t think Plex qualifies.
Privacy: Plex clearly records the metadata of what you watch. When I used it, it would send me a report by email of what my “friends” were watching. Even with that turned off, their services still track telemetry.
Control: Plex has all of it. They can (and do) make unilateral changes to the service, how authentication works, where you can run it, etc.
So I ask, when you are hosting something that is entirely dependent on a commercial entity to function, is Plex really selfhosting in the spirit of this community?
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Is <insert thing here> really Self Hosting?
I don’t really get hung up on the nomenclature and definitions. If you run your services off of a VPS and call it selfhosting, more power to you. No skin off my nose. If you run your services off of a homelab rack that dims the lights whenever you power it on and you call it selfhosting, more power to you. If you’re running your services off of an old repurposed, disposable vape unit, and you call it selfhosting, git sum. It’s a big umbrella and we can all coexist without nitpicking each other. Gatekeeping is something I don’t do, and it gets tiresome to hear others regurgitate the same trope over and over again.
ETA: @CallMeAl@piefed.zip, nice profile shot.
Yeah this is where I am at too, it’s more about who is responsible when it breaks for me and if Plex breaks I have to fix it no matter where it runs. This community is more about learning how to do it than what specific tools to use for me as well, all tools come and go over a long enough timeframe, this is a good place to learn about the next one.
The gates hath been declared open!
Back in the late 60s, I heard a song by Jimi Hendrix called ‘If A 6 Were 9’. One line has stuck with me for decades and I’ve pretty much lived my life this way:
I got my own life to live. I’m the one that’s gonna have to die when it’s time for me to die. So let me live my life the way I want to.
It’s self hosting by the literal definition that you host the server yourself.
That it’s closed source and sends all kinds of data to another server is an entirely separate (and valid) concern.
As much as I agree with the concerns around Plex, I would rather we didn’t start gatekeeping the self hosting community with arbitrary requirements and grey lines around what is and isn’t “true self hosting” or whatever. I would far rather we inform people and let them make their own choices about what they want to host on their private devices and networks.
… well, at some point any hobby grows to the point where purists show up.
There’s give and take with everything. Is it “self” hosted if you rely on Docker - a 3rd party with control over their own infrastructure? Or hosting it on a Debian OS? Is it really “private” if it’s connected to the internet at all?
Are you running the Plex Server application on some hardware so other devices can access the library? Hey, that’s self-hosting. That’s it.
I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules for what is self hosting. Lots of people use cloudflare, which would fail both of your criteria as well.
At least with Plex/cloudflare/others, your overall control and privacy is better and more in your control than it would be with other non-self hosted alternatives.
Plex specifically is the worst of both though. You have to host all of your own data, and pay Plex for the privilege, but they maintain control of virtually everything you can do with it.
I specifically asked about the criteria from this community’s own sidebar because that’s what I’m interested, what is self hosting “in the spirit of this community?”
Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like your reply ignores my actual question for discussion.
The description of this community is not a hard rule written in stone, and I would treat it as more of a vibe than a criteria.
If you want to take it literally, then yes, Plex doesn’t count, neither does cloudflare or wordpress. And many other proprietary systems commonly used by the self hosting community.
But I think the spirit of this community is a bit more loose, and there is room for the likes of Plex.
It’s why I also consider cloudflare against the spirit of the community but I’m not going to give anyone hell over doing things how they want to with their own stuff. Freedom to do things as we’d like is part of the reason why we’re all here, right?
Freedom to do things as we’d like is part of the reason why we’re all here, right?
100% and the mods are also pretty good about removing off topic posts. My question is about understanding what this community thinks and where that line to what is off topic is. There are certainly things you can do with a server at home that would be off topic for this community, right?
There are certainly things you can do with a server at home that would be off topic for this community, right?
I don’t want to hear about hosting CSM but anything else is fair game imo
im out here wondering why anyone would hand anyone credit card information to watch already downloaded pirated content.
open source to me means open source, not open/paywall/ source.
i prefer my open source free with a lil jank. as god intended.
Because I’m lazy and want to be able to watch my stuff from anywhere, and let my friends access my library easily across all their devices.
Setting up Jellyfin for remote access is not trivial. Maybe for a lot of self hosting people it’s fairly simple, but it’s not nearly as simple as just downloading and running the Plex server software.
I paid for a lifetime account when it was 250, and I felt like it was worth it. At 750 like it is now, I probably would actually have considered figuring out Jellyfin. As with everything, it’s a money/time analysis and it’s less of my time to host Plex.
I have both specifically for this reason.
Plex is for my family who only need to know ‘login to your Plex account’, but I personally use Jellyfin because I’m on my VPN. I got the lifetime pass for under $100 ($80?) and it has saved me a lot of time by preventing technical issues that would need my personal attention.
Why would you bother with jellyfin locally if you have Plex also locally? It does nothing better.
The short answer is because it is open source.
I’m using some non-standard transcoding profiles, for example RIFE motion interpolation. I have some other server customizations so that it integrates with my home automation system a bit better.
I can’t customize Plex.
I won’t make any claims about other users, but I am using Plex for 100% legally obtained media, mostly by means of ripping physical media that I still have on my shelf. So, not everybody is using it for pirated content.
Due to the DMCA by circumventing the copyright to rip your DVDs you are technically breaking the law. You would most definitely be considered a pirate.
Some people do not live in the US.
Surprise, DMCA exists in one form or another depending on what county you are from. Thanks to WIPO around 200 countries have similar laws.
https://www.wipo.int/en/web/about-wipo/member-states
Is your country on this list?
I guess that depends on your definition of “piracy”… is it “breaking the law” or is it “stealing”?
In any case, the point I was making is that some people use Plex with non-stolen media. I mostly see assumptions that it’s only used for stolen media, so I wanted to offer a counter-example.
Piracy is infringing on copyright. Ripping DVDs is most definitely consider a form of piracy. Although without sharing it, I think a jury could see it as non-infringing personally.
I do agree there is a huge difference between ripping media and downloading/sharing it as far as civil liability goes.
I take some umbrage with calling either ripping or downloading stealing though as it does not deprive the owner of their property. The correct term would be commercial copyright infringement.
Technically recording TV on VHS is piracy, but in practice no one is getting sued for it.
To this point Congress was ready to eliminate the VHS home taping technology. Believe it or not Mr. Rogers came in to save the VHS from regulation death because he believed parents could record shows to watch with their children.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/29686/how-mister-rogers-saved-vcr
Notable quotes
“The VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” - Jack Velanti
“I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the ‘Neighborhood’ off-the-air … they then become much more active in the programming of their family’s television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been ‘You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions’ … I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important.” - Mr. Rogers
No it isn’t
If by “your definition of piracy” you mean your country’s laws surrounding it, then in the USA you would still be breaking the law. The FBI anti-piracy warning that they put at the beginning of movies to warning you about the anti-piracy laws specifies that the unauthorized reproduction OR distribution of copyrighted works is illegal.
I’ve got no moral qualms about the way I’m handling things, nor am I judging anybody for the way they handle things. My comment was simply meant to show that not everybody is using Plex for stolen media.
Good for you. Now, about those torrents…
Not sure if you’re implying that I torrent my media… but just to be clear I don’t torrent.
Nope, I was talking about me.
By definition, you are a pirate for ripping your purchased physical media! One can only imagine the depravity of then hosting that content for others! Straight to jail!
Good for you. Now, about those torrents…
If you are hosting software services (proprietary or not) on hardware you control, in a network you control, then you are self-hosting. What the service itself actually is is irrelevant.
Please don’t try to gatekeep software or turn selfhosting into a Professional Redditor Larper shitwar like iOS vs Android. Literally no one needs or wants that.
You can criticise Plex for its many shortcomings, that’s valid. Even better if you contribute to Jellyfin so it can overcome its shortcomings. But saying Plex is not self-hosted for puritan reasons is not a good look and smells like StackOverflow and elitist neckbeards; you’re disqualifying people from the community just because you, in your infinite pedantic wisdom, cannot comprehend that they also have valid reasons for using what they use.
By this logic:
- If you use the internet, nothing you access through it is self-hosted, because your ISP dictates if it’s allowed or not. Tailscale, WireGuard, OpenVPN, or a direct port connection are all subject to this. However you can access Jellyfin remotely is subject to this.
- Docker isn’t self-hosted - you depend on Docker Inc, their image registry will be aware of some details about your host, including your IP, which is technically PII and is directly linked to you.
- Let’s Encrypt certificates aren’t self-hosted because they’re an external CA and collect data like your email.
- Jellyfin is not self-hosted, it depends on TMDB and OMDB which are commercial or external.
- Pi-hole is not self-hosted as it depends in many cases on GitHub or external resources for its block lists, and it depends on public resolvers to operate.
- Ubuntu is not self-hosted because Canonical controls everything and has telemetry
- Neither is Windows, Mac, Debian, Arch, or even FreeBSD - they control updates and packages and if they randomly become evil, they have levers on you no matter what. Maybe TempleOS lol.
- Nextcloud is not self-hosted because they control the add-on store, update servers and has telemetry.
- The BitTorrent protocol isn’t self hosted because you rely on trackers and they collect telemetry about your client
- Media piracy isn’t self-hosted because you’re relying on other people to produce it for you
- If you get phone notifications, emails, messages, or whatever else - those aren’t self hosted. Even if you host Ntfy you’re still relying on Apple or Google notification relay servers.
I could go on.
By any stretch of this line of thinking, even the mere act of downloading any software in the first place disqualifies it from counting as self-hosted, because you didn’t build it from scratch and you depend on an external resource, your ISP, a DNS resolver, your operating system, your hardware (microcode, BIOS), your browser, and so on and so forth. The logic breaks down very fast. Don’t.
Sir this is a Wendy’s
Fr tho why would you even start?
OP is clearly talking about the core values of this community (named SelfHosted btw) and whether or not the parent company of Plex (clearly a self-hosted piece of software that happens to be a critical component of Plex’s SaaS product) operates in the spirit of this community and your galaxy brain is over here arguing the semantics of the dictionary definition of the word self-hosted lmao
You were so busy trying to come up with examples of how they’re wrong you forgot to correct them about the name
“Sir you’re actually talking about Plex Media Server, Plex the company is a company and clearly not a piece of self-hosted software”
Making fun of someone to deflect from their valid criticism hasn’t worked on me as an audience to an argument since way before I hit puberty, but I understand it might still work on some other people.
Sure any criticism is valid, it’'s less valid when they miss OPs point, and after a certain length it becomes unnecessarily condescending.
I’m not trying to deflect from their criticism or how it displays their misunderstanding of OPs point, I’m trying to say they were being an asshole about it
Sorry if I came off that way. About misunderstanding the point - look at the other comments. People are making the same points as me. I don’t think I have misunderstood anything here, and I don’t think being a long response automatically makes it any less valid to understand how nuanced and all encompassing our dependence on third parties is.
You’re the one saying “this is a Wendy’s” which feels quite condescending in a post explicitly asking for opinions on how where Plex falls in the selfhosting community, including as defined in the sidebar.
I don’t think they were being an asshole about it.
For me, if I can’t use it when the internet is down it’s not self-hosting, so Plex certainly isn’t for me.
Mine works when the internet is down. Why doesn’t yours?
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Not really. I actually got rid of my Amazon Fire Stick because it didn’t work offline, but Plex did. I discovered this because my TV automatically showed the Plex shares as browsable media sources, which were being broadcast over DLNA.
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What? You need internet to use plex? Can’t you just type in the local IP?
This. I’ve had a couple of situations where we had an ISP outage and for whatever reason Plex Auth had expired and needed to connect to their servers to regain access to local media. The first time it happened I was pissed off. The second time it happened I installed Jellyfin and never looked back.
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Just as much as Tailscale is self hosting. Tailscale is probably more concerning from a security point of view.
To me, Tailscale is not selfhosted at all. That’s why headscale exists.
Just as much as Tailscale is self hosting.
So not at all?
Tailscale is just a Service. Not sure how you could even think calling Tailscale self hosting.
What exactly is concerning about Tailscale’s security?
I’m new to self-hosting and Tailscale was the easiest/fastest way I could get to access my stuff externally. I’m currently learning about the alternatives.
I’m not concerned about it personally, but you are putting a lot of trust in them as a 3rd party service provider. It’s up to your specific risk profile if that’s acceptable risk or not.
The alternative would probably be self hosting a vpn yourself with dyndns to handle ip address resolution. I’m biased (I have a professional networking background) but I don’t think it’s that much harder to setup either. But then I’m also a hypocrite and don’t self host anything anymore.
There’s also a valid argument to be made that doing it yourself is riskier because novices make mistakes. I don’t think this is too big of a concern personally - it’s not like you’re rolling your own cryptography.
Like all VPN-like things, some amount of data has to flow through their system. But almost everything is encrypted nowadays so it’s generally not too big of a worry.
For Tailscale though, they see way less. They see your IP during device setup, and maybe during use if things are making it hard for them to enable a direct connection. Depending on your DNS setup, they may see some of your DNS requests.
Its also really easy to setup your own headscale sever and then nothing goes to them at all. I recommend a small VPS for that, rather than running it on your home internet connection.
Tailscale controls the routing, thus the traffic. They control which keys get trusted. They most of the time distribute and develop the software.
It would be quite easy for them to start snooping on traffic, while on the internet anything basically is additional encrypted, that would not apply so broadly to the traffic that get sent via tailscale especially the self hosted crowd, a lot of that traffic would be http and unencrypted.
I’m going to shame people for using something that used to work well. This will help me by making me feel superior, and it will help others by shaming them. What a good idea I’ve had!
Do you really feel attacked by this post?
Attacked? No this post alone doesn’t make me feel attacked.
Though it’s about weekly that we see a post saying essentially “there’s no reason anyone should still be using Plex…”, or “jellyfin is superior to plex because of x and y”. And honestly, it’s tiring and it feels forced. Like if jellyfin were so perfect, would it really need this many posts propping it up?
Anyway, what bugged me about this post was the level of smugness. “Does Plex even count as self hosting?”, “is this really in the spirit of the community?”… God damn, that sounds like the least bearable person in the homeowners association.
I think Plesk is still self-hosting. Nowhere it says that self host MUST be open source or in general, free stuff. Self hosting is host on your premises, or actually host yourself (hosting on a VPS IMHO is still selfhost).
As for Plex, i discarded it from the day 0 and went with Jellyfin directly, never looked back and i am 100% happy with my choice. I would NOT consider something like Plex (with it’s enshittification, pricing and overall shady approaches in general) as viable for my setup. But, it’s still self-host since you host your media and your service.
I agree that it doesn’t fit the definition in the sidebar, and I don’t use it because of those issues. If I’m self-hosting something, it’s precisely because I don’t want to be sharing data with a company (whether it be my photos or an inventory of my media library) or because I want more control than an external service provides.
That said, most stuff we self-host isn’t going to be completely independent, e.g. if you’re running anything with HTTPS, you’ll need Let’s Encrypt or another way of obtaining a valid cert (unless you want to get into the habit of allowing exceptions in your browser, which is not a good idea).
In the strictest sense, Plex does qualify as self-hosting (you’re running the application on hardware you manage along with your own media library) - but I’d argue that the compromises it requires are not ones every one is willing to agree to.
If you can’t download the software and then run it on an isolated, air gapped network like on a desert island, then it isn’t self hosting.
Plex requires a Plex Pass subscription to share outside of your local network. Plex doesn’t allow you to watch media on your local network if your internet service is down, even if you have the Pass, because the service requires a constant connection to the Plex service itself. You can’t use apps on most streaming boxes and sticks without a Pass subscription. Plex records telemetry on all of your viewing habits and shares it with any of your associates who also use the service.
I switched from Plex to Emby a decade ago because of the restriction on local network streaming without an internet connection. My internet service went down and I said to myself “well I can at least watch my locally hosted files on my tv sitting next to the server”. Nope, not allowed. I emailed Plex support about it once my internet was back and they said that wasn’t a bug, it was by design. I dropped it then and there even though I had a lifetime Pass subscription.
This is incorrect and parroted constantly. It almost feels intentional.
Why would I lie? It was my experience at the time, if it has changed for the better since then, that’s great for Plex users.
For what it’s worth, I had a pretty much identical experience a month or two back.
Plex woke up one day and decided that the TV in my living room and the server in my home-office were clearly so far apart that I’d need to give them money to stream all 20 feet over my LAN - presumably because they woke up one morning and decided that it’s more profitable not to understand VLANs (apparently not understanding VLANs is the “new Plex experience” and we should be very excited about it.) At least, that’s what their support told me - they assured me that streaming from one room to another is now a paid feature.
Naturally, I told them to go fuck themselves and installed Jellyfin. And donated 10x what a ‘Plex Pass’ would have cost to the guy that made the Samsung-Tizen-Jellyfin-Installer thingummy. Because, well, fuck Plex.
Naturally, I told them to go fuck themselves and installed Jellyfin. And donated 10x what a ‘Plex Pass’ would have cost to the guy that made the Samsung-Tizen-Jellyfin-Installer thingummy. Because, well, fuck Plex.
And then they all clapped.
Tremendous work, have you considered a career on the stage? Sweeping it, perhaps?
It has not changed. Your experience is, you didn’t read the docs, made an assumption, and have been incorrect ever since. Idc if you call it a lie or not, but you know now. If you continue to spread this misinformation, it is absolutely a lie.
If not a lie, you were simply misinformed. Hopefully you will no longer be
I’ll say it again: it was my experience at the time, ten years ago. There is no misinformation. Apparently the situation has changed for the better for Plex users and that’s great. But I’m not going to change what I said, because it was what I experienced; to do so would be misinformation.
The difference between “this is true” and “this was true ten years ago” is huge.
Presenting one as the other is why you’re being challenged
I never misrepresented anything. I spoke of my experience, and when I was told the situation had changed I was clear in several comments that I was happy it is now better for current users. You are talking as if I am intentionally misleading people when it’s clear that I am not. Why are you doing that?
intentionally misleading
I didn’t suggest you did it intentionally.
I am suggesting that you are being challenged by others because your sentence as written and without the context of the other comments is incorrect, whether intentionally or unintentionally.
Well, grammatical quibble then.
Your verbs are present tense and not past tense:
Plex requires a Plex Pass subscription
Plex doesn’t allow you to watch media on your local network
This gives the impression that you’re talking about the current state of things. Which seems to be the above commenter’s issue.
Where as:
Plex required a Plex Pass subscription
or
Plex didn’t allow you to watch media on your local network
Would imply a past experience.
Misinformation doesn’t mean that you’re intentionally lying (that is disinformation), it just means that you’re stating facts that are not true.
(I’m not being negative, just pedantic lol)
To actually contribute to the conversation:
Plex now allows local network streaming without their servers being offline as long as your client is already authenticated (cached tokens have a short expiration date however)
Alternatively, you can add your LAN’s subnet in Settings > Server > Network > ‘List of IP addresses and networks that are allowed without auth’
Here’s a full written guide: https://forums.plex.tv/t/howto-use-plex-with-no-internet/383325
Your verbs are present tense and not past tense
I was clear in other comments that I was speaking of what I knew to be true at the time, therefore the tense was correct from my perspective. I was told that the situation changed about seven years ago, I acknowledged this and expressed happiness for current Plex users, and then came several different people piling on telling me I’m lying, I’m wrong, I’m misleading, even after I stated that my experience was ten years ago and I acknowledged that things had changed since then.
To be abundantly clear, from my point of view before I was corrected, the present tense was correct based on my experience. I acknowledged the corrections and was still accused of lying and misrepresenting. I just don’t get that. I don’t understand why immediately acknowledging and accepting and even expressing genuine happiness that the situation has changed leads to attacks from all sides. I don’t understand why any of you refuse to acknowledge that I was speaking of an experience a decade ago, you all insist that I’m trying to say that is how it is now, and I’m not fucking doing that at all.
This place takes itself way, way too seriously, in my opinion. I’m sorry for any toes I stepped on without even meaning to, and I won’t comment on the matter further.
I understood the misunderstanding from reading the previous comments.
I was clear in other comments that I was speaking of what I knew to be true at the time, therefore the tense was correct from my perspective.
I didn’t say you were intentionally lying, only that you were mistaken. I wasn’t making a personal attack.
I acknowledge that based on your experience that is how Plex worked 10 years ago, but it is not how it currently works. So, when you say that ‘this is how Plex works’ instead of ‘this is how Plex worked 10 years ago’ it’s implying that it still works like that when it does not. That could confuse people who are here and trying to learn.
This place takes itself way, way too seriously, in my opinion. I’m sorry for any toes I stepped on without even meaning to, and I won’t comment on the matter further.
The community exists to talk about, and help people with, self hosting. Providing incorrect information runs counter to that purpose and so community members should point out when information isn’t correct.
Misinformation just means that the information that you’re providing is not correct, it’s not a personal attack on you to be corrected about a factual issue. It doesn’t mean that you’re a bad person or suggest that you’re trying to be intentionally misleading, it just means that your statements do not match the current factual reality.
The situation did not change. You were wrong ten years ago too.
