189

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?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] jlow@slrpnk.net 29 points 2 days ago

For me, if I can't use it when the internet is down it's not self-hosting, so Plex certainly isn't for me.

[-] W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago

You can use plex when the internet is down.

[-] Couldbealeotard@lemmy.world 17 points 2 days ago

Mine works when the internet is down. Why doesn't yours?

[-] W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 2 days ago

Because they’re a silly goose who never learned to google

[-] kossa@feddit.org 3 points 1 day ago

But the internet is down, so how can they google?

[-] JordanZ@lemmy.world 10 points 2 days ago

This can be done but you need to set the ip address ranges that don’t require auth when you can still get into the server(aka have internet). Then it works without internet fine.

[-] friend_of_satan@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago

Not really. I actually got rid of my Amazon Fire Stick because it didn't work offline, but Plex did. I discovered this because my TV automatically showed the Plex shares as browsable media sources, which were being broadcast over DLNA.

[-] JordanZ@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago

That’s an option too but that’s mostly just DLNA and not really Plex (as the client).

[-] Bitswap@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago

What? You need internet to use plex? Can't you just type in the local IP?

You can use Plex without the Internet. But it takes an extra two or three setup steps, so lots of people immediately jump to “wahhh my Plex isn’t working” when their Internet goes out. Not because it can’t work, but because they didn’t jump through the extra hoops to ensure it does.

[-] MaggiWuerze@feddit.org 1 points 1 day ago

The crowd that claims that setting up an elaborate VPN scheme is fine has a problem entering an IP range?

[-] thumdinger@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

This. I’ve had a couple of situations where we had an ISP outage and for whatever reason Plex Auth had expired and needed to connect to their servers to regain access to local media. The first time it happened I was pissed off. The second time it happened I installed Jellyfin and never looked back.

[-] W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 2 days ago

Jellyfin. Jellyfin. JELLYFIN. install it now? Is it the right fit? Fuck you who cares. I loaded Jellyfin and it worked for me so if it doesn’t work for you then you’re wrong!

Jellyfin!

Forget Emby or Kodi. JELLYFIN JELLYFINJELLUFIN!!!!!!

[-] ripcord@lemmy.world 8 points 2 days ago

Despite the downvotes this does seem pretty accurate for this community lately.

[-] W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 day ago

Yep, which is why I’m doing it. I tried reasonable debate but that didn’t work sooo……

this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
189 points (100.0% liked)

Selfhosted

59534 readers
459 users here now

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.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

  7. No low-effort posts. This is subjective and will largely be determined by the community member reports.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS