this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
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Selfhosted

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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.

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Text:

I consent to Plex to: (i) sell certain personal information (hashed emails, advertising identifiers) to third-parties for advertising and marketing purposes; and (ii) store and/or access certain personal information (advertising identifiers, IP address, content being watched) on my device(s) and share that information with Plex’s advertising partners. This data is used to deliver personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. Your consent applies to all devices on which you have Plex installed. You can withdraw your consent at any time in Account Settings or using this page.

Soure: https://www.plex.tv/vendors/ (Might have to clear cache)

Can also read about the changes here: https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 week ago

Last shit they pulled I moved to Jellyfin. Today I deleted my Plex account.

[–] [email protected] 51 points 1 week ago (50 children)

Can someone clue me in on the reason why anyone would prefer Plex instead of Jellyfin?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Can I ask why nobody recommends Emby? I've been using it for years with zero issues. The only thing I can think of is that Jellyfin exists and is free. Emby is sort of a middleground between Plex and Jellyfin; it has a paid license (lifetime option exists), but it's closer to Jellyfin than Plex on the whole.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Emby rugpulled their users, that's why jellyfin exists at all.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago (4 children)

Do you mind elaborating on that? It sounds like I got in on Emby after the rugpull. It works fine for me and I use it without the Connect (online account) feature.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 week ago (3 children)

I am a die-hard Jellyfin user, but I still haven't found a proper way to index and stream my music library with it. As far as i know, Plex is still better at that.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 week ago (5 children)

I dropped my library in, Jellyfin indexed it and streamed first try. What didn't work for you?

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago

People commonly cite more polished clients and clients available on obscure platforms like legacy smart TVs and such

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 week ago (2 children)

So expected. Now anyone who's able to support the non exploitative alternatives like Jellyfin please do. It's how you keep the good things going.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The more services you have depending on a 3rd party which can do whatever the fuck they want, either directly or by changing the rules when the feel like it (i.e. not bound by rules they cannot change, such as root DNS providers are) and then doing it, the less your system is actually self-hosted, IMHO.

For me the whole point of self-hosting is exactly being as independent as possible of 3rd parties that can just fuck you up, be it on purpose (generally for $$$) or because they go bankrupt and close their services.

This is why I've actually chosen to run Kodi on my home server that doubles down as TV Box even though I can't easilly use it from anywhere else (it's possible but it involves using a standalone database that is then shared, which can only be safelly done through customly setup ssh pipes) rather than something like Plex.

It's kinda funny to see people into self-hosting still doing the kind of mistake I did almost 3 decades ago (fortunatelly in a professional environment) of trusting a 3rd party to the point of becoming dependent on them and later getting burned when they abused that trust, and which led me to avoid such situations like the plague ever since.

Mind you, I can understand if people for whom self-hosting is not driven by a desire to reduce vulnerability to the whims of 3rd parties (which includes reducing the risk of enshittification) and is instead driven by "waste not" (for example, bringing new life to old hardware rather than throwing it out) or by it being a fun challenge, don't really care to be as independent as possible from such 3rd parties.

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