this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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712
That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing (poptalk.scrubbles.tech)
submitted 13 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
339 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://poptalk.scrubbles.tech/post/2333639

I was just forwarded this someone in my household who watches our server. That's it folks. I've been a hold out for a long time, but this is honestly it.

They want me to pay to stream content that I bought from my hardware transcoded also on my hardware.

I'll say it. As of today, I say Plex is dead. Luckily I've been setting up Jellyfin, I guess it's time to make it production ready.

Edit: I have a Plex Pass. More comments saying “Just buy a plex pass” are seriously not getting it. I have a Plex Pass and my users are still getting this.

And for the thousandth person who wants to say the same things to me:

  • YES I know I'm unaffected as a Plex Pass owner.
  • My users were immediately angry at it, which made me angry. Our users don't understand what plex pass is, and they shouldn't have to, that's why I had it. The fact that they were pinged even though it should have kept working is horribly sloppy
  • Plex is still removing functionality. I don't care that "People should pay their fair share". If Plex wants to put every new feature behind a paywall, that's completely okay. They are removing functionality.
    • "But they have cloud costs". Remote streaming is negligible to them. It's a dynamic DNS service. Plex client logs in, asks where server is, plex cloud responds with the IP and port of where server is located. That's it.
    • "Good luck finding another remote streaming" - Again, Plex just opens up an IP and port. Jellyfin also just opens up an IP and port (Hold on jellyfin folks I know, security, that's a separate conversation). All "remote streaming" is is their dynamic dns. Literal pennies to them. Know what actually is costing them money? Hosting all of that ad-supported "free" content that they're probably losing money on.

In short, I don't care how you justify it. Plex is doing something shitty. They're removing functionality that has been free for years. I'm not responding to any more of your comments repeating the same arguments over and over.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 46 minutes ago

I've only ever used jellyfin and have no complaints.

I avoided plex and went with jellyfill because it's free/libre software.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 minutes ago

Wonder how long before those 2.99 a month figures will last. I give it a year before there's no seperate remote streaming package and the only remaining one is >10$. The main appeal of Plex was not paying. It's used by pirates. The goal is content for free. It's no longer free. I don't care at all if random people can use my Plex server. If they are unwilling to adapt to a new platform, then I guess they'll resubscribe to Netflix. Most of them never unsubscribed from Netflix to begin with.

This was the end for me. Used Plex for almost a decade. I'm off to Jellyfin. It's actually almost no change whatsoever to integrate it into my home setup.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 1 hour ago

Fuck them, glad I switched to Jellyfin years ago.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 32 minutes ago

Indeed, no need to have Plex anymore. Will probably set up a family VPN and we can all stream directly from my harddrives, bandwidth is not an issue anyway.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 hour ago

Once you invite an MBA in you can never uninvite them…

[–] [email protected] 63 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

not a plex user but someone buried the lede here... to me, this is the neon sign that screams GTFO:

we noticed that you've accessed libraries in the past

what business of yours is it to notice my private comings and goings?! what other actionable intel do y'all keep in your logs?! bye!

[–] [email protected] 59 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

Guess it’s time to start using jellyfin and contributing

[–] [email protected] 23 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

JellyFin is fantastic software and I have no complaints.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 43 minutes ago

yup same. First thing I install on a new device is jellyfin. For software that's relatively young, it's pretty awesome.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I don't use Plex. I have never used Plex. But based on the one time I tried, this doesn't surprise me even a little bit.

Years ago I installed it on my NAS, it was a one click download package. I installed it and hit the button to set it up. And then it prompted me to make a cloud account.

Why do I need a cloud account? I am logging into my local server and I am not sharing anything with anybody nor am I subscribing to any cloud services. I have no need of a cloud account. But, the way they built the thing, you need a cloud account to log into your local system.

I did not create a cloud account. I uninstalled it. I concluded that a company that claims to care about user privacy, but requires cloud integration in an area that absolutely does not require cloud anything, does not actually give a shit about privacy. I Googled and found that the requirement for a cloud account was, at the time, a fairly new thing. Lots of people didn't like it. I concluded that this company was beginning to enshittify, although this was years ago and none of us had heard that word yet. But either way, it was obvious that the company was moving in a not customer-friendly direction and I did not want to be along for the ride.

My choice has been proven right several times over the years since. And yes, every time they remove a feature, or make some other customer unfriendly decision, I retell this story.

The moral here is that a company either cares about its customers or it doesn't, and it's usually pretty easy to tell which one fairly quickly. When one bad decision is made, and not corrected, others will follow.

Synology is the latest example of that. For anyone not paying attention, they have recently announced that their 2025 series units will only work with Synology branded hard drives, which are of course more expensive than standard Seagate or Western Digital drives (which work just fine). But if you look, the bread crumbs are there and form a trail. Over the last few years they have removed features, for example the device is no longer can decode h.265 surveillance video, and the units will no longer display SMART data for 'unsupported' drives. I say no longer because they used to, but an update changed that so they no longer do.

Bottom line though is don't do business with companies that don't respect you.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 53 minutes ago

I had exactly the same experience, at about the same time. Had been hearing good things about Plex so decided to try it out. Immediately noped out when it required me to create an account with them. Similar to you I looked around and found it to be a relatively new change.

Frankly baffling to me that anyone with the wherewithal to self-host was okay with it.

[–] [email protected] 86 points 6 hours ago* (last edited 6 hours ago) (11 children)

Seems like it was only a matter of time.

20% more will jump to Jellyfin. The other 80% will entrench and talk even more about how great Plex is. I mean Jesus, $250 to watch pirated movies. lol wtf It's also fucking wild to me that people are defending a monetization model that is on self hosted hardware. Like, I gotta pay for my server and then a license to avoid buying DVDs. Fuck it, at this point just buy the fucking movie.

Ya'll are brain dead. Plex loves you tho.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I dunno man, I don't care much, when Plex gets shitty enough I'll jump. But paying for the ongoing maintenance of software isn't some evil thing, even if I self host it.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

You're not paying for software maintenance, you're paying a subscription service to a private company that has already decided to cut back on features that others also thought they were paying to maintain.

If you want to actually pay for software maintenance, migrate to Jellyfin and pay them instead, rather than filtering your payments through middle managers and shareholders first.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 40 minutes ago

Problem is jellyfin (apps and server) is shit

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

"your friends"

dude my friends don't charge me for shit

[–] [email protected] 1 points 20 minutes ago

You posted almost verbatim what I was about to write. It's a proper "don't shit on my pie and tell me it's a blueberry" moment. That's not what friends are.

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