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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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[–] 6 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

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?

I understand where you’re coming from but, to me, self hosting is an ethos, not a checklist. If self hosting has to be void of a commercial entity then my services at home that are available externally aren’t self hosted since I have to rely on my ISP for that to work. And all of the electricity for my servers comes from a commercial company so those aren’t self hosted. And using a public domain isn’t self hosting.

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  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago

    That's a bs comparison. You cannot login tonplonplex if they are down well you can but only locally and it isn't the default. Also if Plex disappears yourself hosted instance is finished.

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