this post was submitted on 01 May 2025

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1154

That's all folks, Plex is starting to charge for sharing (poptalk.scrubbles.tech)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 18 hours ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

602 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] 11 points 1 hour ago

Dropped this for jellyfin years ago

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I love Plex and will continue using it. I bought a lifetime Plex Pass years ago for and have no regrets. My Plex Pass means none of my watchers have to worry about paying anything.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 15 minutes ago

Woosh ? Thats literally the proble. thr OP referred to,he to has a Plexpass and his watchers are being notified.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

I have plex set up with cloudflare tunnels, with the url configured in plex under Settings > Network > Custom server access URLs, does this mean that my users will no longer be able to view content inside the plex app or app.plex.tv? The enshittification is real

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

If the host has Plex pass other accounts dont need it to watch, iirc.

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

I saw that in the email. I'll be switching to jellyfin or emby before I give Plex my precious schmeckles to unlock a feature that doesn't cost them any money.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 3 hours ago

Open Source

[–] [email protected] 38 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

"On 21 May 2008, XBMC developer Elan Feingold forked the source code of XBMC and started a new project called Plex"

GPL v2 source.

They've long been suspected of being greedy lil GPL violaters.

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/2974

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 hours ago

Wasn't expecting to see that.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 4 hours ago

Another reason donating to FOSS is better than paying for proprietary software. Proprietary software devs get to run around stealing whatever code they like from the open-source community and never suffer any consequence because they don't make their source available. I can think of a select few proprietary projects that have the balls to be source-available.

If you want to intentionally create a system that lets you evade accountability for stealing code, "fine", but I have zero respect for you or your product, and I'm certainly not paying you a dime. I'll put my money toward the developers who work to better the world instead of the rat fucks who steal from them to make money and pollute the software ecosystem with proprietary trash.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

Oh no a paid, proprietary, piece of shit software does something shitty. Who could've ever saw this coming?!

I've said it for years anytime anyone mentioned running a Plex server. As soon as you install that on your server or your homelab it's no longer your server. Proprietary software is malware

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

I hope more people realise this.

If it's not Open Source, I don't want it

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago

B-b-b-but my convenience!!!

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 6 hours ago (1 children)

The more users on Jellyfin the better shot it has at getting more developer attention and users willing to contribute financially even if just occasional one off donation. How it goes with any open source application. More users, more developer interest, more feedback from users, subset of users willing to financially support the project

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 hours ago

i love jellyfin. been very good to me so far!

[–] [email protected] 33 points 6 hours ago (8 children)

Thank you for posting this. I thought it was just me.

In my case, one user actually lost access entirely to my libraries, the updated app was trying to force him to buy a personal pass, even though I have a Plex pass.

I had him reset his app and clear cache, to no avail. I ended up having to REMOVE his access to my libraries, and then reshare them to him, before he could access them again.

He was quite upset at Plex during the entire process.

Then the next day, he got this same email, and was frustrated all over again thinking he was gonna have to fight it again.

Really terrible customer service here, very sloppy. Aside from the fact that this is a greedy cash grab, it's just being done poorly.

Jellyfin still isn't feature packed enough for me to switch to, unfortunately.

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

I don't use either but have wanted to get into them. What's jellyfin missing?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 hours ago

What features are you looking for? Jellyfin plays movies just fine, what else do you need?

[–] [email protected] 9 points 6 hours ago (2 children)

I'm glad I'm not the only one. I'm getting a lot of vitriol here from people saying "Well your users are idiots", or other angry things. No, my users are family members, and not everyone needs a degree in CS to be able to connect to a Plex server. A few of them are elderly. The email was misleading to them, on purpose. It threw many of them into a flurry. The whole thing was handled terribly by a company who keeps going out of their way to make it difficult for them already to simply watch my server.

I'd suggest trying Jellyfin out again. Personally I was in the same boat even just over a year ago, I wasn't impressed, but it's come a long way. It's absolutely not as polished as Plex, but if you can look past that I'm finding most of the features I need are there.

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

I find the server part of Jellyfin to work pretty well and I love that it provides some features you would have to pay to get on Plex (skip intro/credits for instance). The clients on the other hand, specially for tvOS and the fact that you can't install it from the store on Samsung TVs, are really what's making it difficult for me to switch.