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Is Plex really Self Hosting? (piefed.zip)
submitted 4 months ago by to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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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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[–] 34 points 4 months ago (14 children)

As long as you're running it on your own hardware, it sure is.

Privacy: Plex clearly records the metadata of what you watch.

Sure, that doesn't really have anything to do with self-hosting, though.

Control: Plex has all of it.

They have no control at all over the contents of your media library. Even if they shut down everything, all your media is still there. They merely have control over a user interface that can be replaced.

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  • [+] -15 points 4 months ago* (13 children)

    They merely have control over a user interface that can be replaced.

    If you have no control over it, that means plex isnt self hosted. The data is self hosted, but not the interface which is all that plex is at the end. You are basically just donating your hardware and data to a shitty company at that point.

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  • [–] 22 points 4 months ago* (12 children)

    It software hosted on hardware I physically control. That's self-hosting.

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I'm self hosting Microsoft Office right now

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  • [+] -11 points 4 months ago (8 children)

    Controlling the software is an integral part of the ethos of self hosting. Literally right in the first sentence of the wikipedia page.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hosting_(network)

    Self-hosting is the practice of running and maintaining a website or service, as well as own servers for e-mail, IM, NTP and so on, using a private server, instead of using a service outside of the administrator's own control. Self-hosting allows users to have more control over their data, privacy, and computing infrastructure, as well as potentially saving costs and improving skills.

    instead of using a service outside of the administrator's own control

    Plex is outside of the administrators control.

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  • [–] 19 points 4 months ago* (7 children)

    Plex is outside of the administrators control.

    That's funny, because I'm pretty sure I installed it and I also have the power to uninstall it. Seems like control to me.

    Anyway, I really have no interest in arguing with elitist takes that are objectively wrong.

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  • [–] -5 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    If it's just about installing a program and bring able to uninstall it, that would mean that if Netflix made a program you could install, you're now self hosting Netflix.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Well, that depends on what type of software netflix would make available. If it's just a client application, that doesn't really qualify as self-hosting, since it's a client and not a server. That's basically just using an app on any device.

    But if you could install the netflix server side software and connect it to your own media library and access it with your own local clients, then you'd be literally self-hosting netflix, indeed.

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  • [–] -2 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Ah, but I control if the client application is installed or not. And technically Netflix did allow downloading content for offline viewing - as long as you had an account (don't know if they still do).

    Now both the content and the application are on your hardware. Ergo by your logic, that would be self hosting.

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago

    I mean .. if you somehow can also download all the content, yeah. You're literally be self hosting netflix. Their content library is probably the more important part to their business model than the software ... What is your point?

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago (2 children)

    You don't control the Netflix server, AT ALL. How is this hard to comprehend?

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