this post was submitted on 01 May 2025
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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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[–] TheTechnician27@lemmy.world 56 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

Exhibit #46,853 for why freeware will inevitably fall out from under your feet and why you should exclusively use FOSS wherever possible.

EDIT: Here's Jellyfin's 'How to Contribute' page.

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[–] NigelFrobisher@aussie.zone 19 points 2 days ago

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

[–] rumba@lemmy.zip 30 points 2 days ago (17 children)

Playon, Evernote, Lastpass, there have been plenty of examples.

Whenever a company starts charging for previously free features, it's time to GTFO, even if you're on their pay side.

I've got lifetime Plexpass, but I can read the writing on the wall. It's only a matter of time before they enshittify my product or stop providing updates. They'll sunset Plex and start Plex+ or some shit, give em a year or so.

Get your Jellyfin installed and working, they can work beside each other. Tailscale if it's just you, reverse proxy if you have the fam on in.

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[–] njm1314@lemmy.world 39 points 2 days ago (9 children)

So as long as the server owner has Plex pass everyone's still able to stream from the server?

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[–] ozoned@lemmy.world 45 points 2 days ago (26 children)

YES JELLYFIN! Thank you Plex for enshitifying!

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[–] Steve@startrek.website 32 points 2 days ago

Friendship ended with plex, jellyfin is new best friend.

[–] deathbird@mander.xyz 12 points 2 days ago (3 children)

What was the appeal of Plex anyway?

[–] domi@lemmy.secnd.me 11 points 2 days ago (3 children)

It has been a few years since I last used Plex but I always liked their interface, their tech stack is fairly modern, they have apps for pretty much every device, their title matching for content works really well and there was not much wrong with it back in the day other than it lacking local authentication.

I switched over long ago when they started pushing streaming services to my users that I couldn't deactivate server side.

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[–] Darkassassin07@lemmy.ca 46 points 2 days ago (15 children)

I got the same email.

I haven't had plex installed for over 7 years, and I've NEVER used the shared libraries feature.

We noticed that you’ve accessed libraries from friends and family in the past

They've apparently noticed activity that's never occurred.

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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 7 points 2 days ago

People use Plex?

[–] melmi@lemmy.blahaj.zone 23 points 2 days ago (7 children)

It seems like multiple things are being conflated here and I'm not sure what the reality is because I've never used Plex.

Some people claim this has something to do with Plex needing to pay for NAT traversal infrastructure. Okay, that seems sort of silly but at least there's the excuse that their servers are involved in the streaming somehow.

But their wording is very broad, just calling it "remote streaming." That led me to this article on the Plex support website, which walks people through setting up port forwarding in order to enable "remote streaming"! So that excuse doesn't really seem to hold water. What exactly is being paid for here then? How do they define what "local streaming" is?

[–] scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech 19 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Exactly my point. There's some due hard people here saying that remote streaming is only possible because of plex's servers, but that's just not true. They act as fancy DNS or proxying, they lust point to your local server. That's all. Regular DNS or even an IP and port are all it takes to get remote streaming up

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[–] LadyAutumn@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

Wonder how long 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.

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[–] Jaysyn@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

LOL, aren't there at least a half dozen open source alternatives for Plex?

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