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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Many of us are caught on the convenience of Plex and actively are working to replicate that with alternatives.
There are a few features that are not replicated anywhere else:
- the Plex magic proxy
- combined libraries
- Easy to use apps because of 1
Its a matter of not having these being more annoying than Plex is.
Please don’t try to gatekeep software or turn selfhosting into a Professional Redditor Larper shitwar like iOS vs Android. Literally no one needs or wants that.
You can criticise Plex for its many shortcomings, that’s valid. Even better if you contribute to Jellyfin so it can overcome its shortcomings. But saying Plex is not self-hosted for puritan reasons is not a good look and smells like StackOverflow and elitist neckbeards; you’re disqualifying people from the community just because you, in your infinite pedantic wisdom, cannot comprehend that they also have valid reasons for using what they use.
By this logic:
- If you use the internet, nothing you access through it is self-hosted, because your ISP dictates if it’s allowed or not. Tailscale, WireGuard, OpenVPN, or a direct port connection are all subject to this. However you can access Jellyfin remotely is subject to this.
- Docker isn’t self-hosted - you depend on Docker Inc, their image registry will be aware of some details about your host, including your IP, which is technically PII and is directly linked to you.
- Let’s Encrypt certificates aren’t self-hosted because they’re an external CA and collect data like your email.
- Jellyfin is not self-hosted, it depends on TMDB and OMDB which are commercial or external.
- Pi-hole is not self-hosted as it depends in many cases on GitHub or external resources for its block lists, and it depends on public resolvers to operate.
- Ubuntu is not self-hosted because Canonical controls everything and has telemetry
- Neither is Windows, Mac, Debian, Arch, or even FreeBSD - they control updates and packages and if they randomly become evil, they have levers on you no matter what. Maybe TempleOS lol.
- Nextcloud is not self-hosted because they control the add-on store, update servers and has telemetry.
- The BitTorrent protocol isn’t self hosted because you rely on trackers and they collect telemetry about your client
- Media piracy isn’t self-hosted because you’re relying on other people to produce it for you
- If you get phone notifications, emails, messages, or whatever else - those aren’t self hosted. Even if you host Ntfy you’re still relying on Apple or Google notification relay servers.
I could go on.
By any stretch of this line of thinking, even the mere act of downloading any software in the first place disqualifies it from counting as self-hosted, because you didn’t build it from scratch and you depend on an external resource, your ISP, a DNS resolver, your operating system, your hardware (microcode, BIOS), your browser, and so on and so forth. The logic breaks down very fast. Don’t.
Sir this is a Wendy’s
Fr tho why would you even start?
OP is clearly talking about the core values of this community (named SelfHosted btw) and whether or not the parent company of Plex (clearly a self-hosted piece of software that happens to be a critical component of Plex’s SaaS product) operates in the spirit of this community and your galaxy brain is over here arguing the semantics of the dictionary definition of the word self-hosted lmao
You were so busy trying to come up with examples of how they’re wrong you forgot to correct them about the name
“Sir you’re actually talking about Plex Media Server, Plex the company is a company and clearly not a piece of self-hosted software”
Making fun of someone to deflect from their valid criticism hasn’t worked on me as an audience to an argument since way before I hit puberty, but I understand it might still work on some other people.
Sure any criticism is valid, it’'s less valid when they miss OPs point, and after a certain length it becomes unnecessarily condescending.
I’m not trying to deflect from their criticism or how it displays their misunderstanding of OPs point, I’m trying to say they were being an asshole about it
Sorry if I came off that way. About misunderstanding the point - look at the other comments. People are making the same points as me. I don’t think I have misunderstood anything here, and I don’t think being a long response automatically makes it any less valid to understand how nuanced and all encompassing our dependence on third parties is.
You’re the one saying “this is a Wendy’s” which feels quite condescending in a post explicitly asking for opinions on how where Plex falls in the selfhosting community, including as defined in the sidebar.
I don’t think they were being an asshole about it.
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.
Mine works when the internet is down. Why doesn’t yours?
Because they’re a silly goose who never learned to google
But the internet is down, so how can they google?
You can use plex when the internet is down.
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.
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.
That’s an option too but that’s mostly just DLNA and not really Plex (as the client).
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.
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 to Jellyfin and never looked back.
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!!!
Despite the downvotes this does seem pretty accurate for this community lately.
Yep, which is why I’m doing it. I tried reasonable debate but that didn’t work sooo……
thank you for not using /s and just taking the downvotes like champ!
I mean, at the end of the day the imaginary points aren’t good for anything. Thanks for the comment (seriously).
You can white list local IP address if you want them to work without auth. Just a config issue in your end.
This was for the server itself requiring re-authentication with Plex for the server claim token, rather than client auth. Some situation arose where the claim token was no longer valid, expired, unsure, and the server was locked out and local media inaccessible until ISP outage resolved and could login with Plex account (2 weeks due to fallen tree). Not ruling out a config issue. Was a couple of years ago now, so bit fuzzy on the details.
Plex technically IS self-hosting but the significance of self is pretty low as Plex has a lot of control over it.
Plex has zero control over it unless you want to do remote streaming.
Just as much as Tailscale is self hosting. Tailscale is probably more concerning from a security point of view.
What exactly is concerning about Tailscale’s security?
I’m new to self-hosting and Tailscale was the easiest/fastest way I could get to access my stuff externally. I’m currently learning about the alternatives.
Like all VPN-like things, some amount of data has to flow through their system. But almost everything is encrypted nowadays so it’s generally not too big of a worry.
For Tailscale though, they see way less. They see your IP during device setup, and maybe during use if things are making it hard for them to enable a direct connection. Depending on your DNS setup, they may see some of your DNS requests.
Its also really easy to setup your own headscale sever and then nothing goes to them at all. I recommend a small VPS for that, rather than running it on your home internet connection.
Tailscale controls the routing, thus the traffic. They control which keys get trusted. They most of the time distribute and develop the software.
It would be quite easy for them to start snooping on traffic, while on the internet anything basically is additional encrypted, that would not apply so broadly to the traffic that get sent via tailscale especially the self hosted crowd, a lot of that traffic would be http and unencrypted.
I’m not concerned about it personally, but you are putting a lot of trust in them as a 3rd party service provider. It’s up to your specific risk profile if that’s acceptable risk or not.
The alternative would probably be self hosting a vpn yourself with dyndns to handle ip address resolution. I’m biased (I have a professional networking background) but I don’t think it’s that much harder to setup either. But then I’m also a hypocrite and don’t self host anything anymore.
There’s also a valid argument to be made that doing it yourself is riskier because novices make mistakes. I don’t think this is too big of a concern personally - it’s not like you’re rolling your own cryptography.
To me, Tailscale is not selfhosted at all. That’s why headscale exists.
Just as much as Tailscale is self hosting.
So not at all?
Tailscale is just a Service. Not sure how you could even think calling Tailscale self hosting.
Well that would be the description of the community, but the actual rules section doesn’t say anything about privacy/control.
So at the end of the day Plex is self hosted (you run most of it) so it should qualify. It might not 100% match the spirit of self hosting it does still meet the definition.
You can argue most Jellyfin/emby installs have the same problem because most users are still are dependent on external services because of things like metadata plugins.
And on the privacy front those plugins aren’t any better than Plex. For instance The Movie DB which is the primary movie and TV metadata provider for Jellyfin has a privacy policy that clearly says they will use and share any interaction you have with the site including location and personal information. They almost certainly keep track of what is in your library. They don’t have a user account for you that they can use to track across IPs, but if your ISP keeps you on the same IP for long periods of time they have a good idea of what you are watching.
You can run Jellyfin without those plugins enabled but unless you want to build/collect manual nfo files to import that data you are going to have a subpar experience.
Same problem for the **arr stack since they need metadata as well. Some of which go to different providers so you are giving out that information to additional parties (i.e. Sonarr goes to TheTVDB which has a similar privacy policy).
You can configure the arrs to write out nfo metadata and have Jellyfin consume that so that at least you aren’t giving away your info to two external parties.
Im not a self hoster so never mentioned it as peanut gallery but I was wondering reading stuff. I was kinda like. Whats the point of plex sounds like you need to connect with them or something.
I think Plesk is still self-hosting. Nowhere it says that self host MUST be open source or in general, free stuff. Self hosting is host on your premises, or actually host yourself (hosting on a VPS IMHO is still selfhost).
As for Plex, i discarded it from the day 0 and went with Jellyfin directly, never looked back and i am 100% happy with my choice. I would NOT consider something like Plex (with it’s enshittification, pricing and overall shady approaches in general) as viable for my setup. But, it’s still self-host since you host your media and your service.
at this point, Plex is self-shooting-in-the-foot
Plex is kind of a weird hybrid where it is self hosted but a part of the backend infrastructure is not. For my use this is advantageous because it simplifies the service for my less technically inclined family members that would struggle with using something like jellyfin.
I look at it as a comfortable middle ground to get people off Netflix and other services for now but I don’t have much faith that it will last forever with what plex is doing as a company recently.
As long as you’re running it on your own hardware, it sure is.
Privacy: Plex clearly records the metadata of what you watch.
Sure, that doesn’t really have anything to do with self-hosting, though.
Control: Plex has all of it.
They have no control at all over the contents of your media library. Even if they shut down everything, all your media is still there. They merely have control over a user interface that can be replaced.
They merely have control over a user interface that can be replaced.
If you have no control over it, that means plex isnt self hosted. The data is self hosted, but not the interface which is all that plex is at the end. You are basically just donating your hardware and data to a shitty company at that point.
It software hosted on hardware I physically control. That’s self-hosting.
I’m self hosting Microsoft Office right now
(I know you’re just joking)
☝️🤓, We typically don’t consider local-only applications as being hosted.
Hosted implies a server and the ability to operate remotely and to service multiple users.
Controlling the software is an integral part of the ethos of self hosting. Literally right in the first sentence of the wikipedia page.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-hosting_(network)
Self-hosting is the practice of running and maintaining a website or service, as well as own servers for e-mail, IM, NTP and so on, using a private server, instead of using a service outside of the administrator’s own control. Self-hosting allows users to have more control over their data, privacy, and computing infrastructure, as well as potentially saving costs and improving skills.
instead of using a service outside of the administrator’s own control
Plex is outside of the administrators control.
Plex is outside of the administrators control.
That’s funny, because I’m pretty sure I installed it and I also have the power to uninstall it. Seems like control to me.
Anyway, I really have no interest in arguing with elitist takes that are objectively wrong.
If it’s just about installing a program and bring able to uninstall it, that would mean that if Netflix made a program you could install, you’re now self hosting Netflix.
Well, that depends on what type of software netflix would make available. If it’s just a client application, that doesn’t really qualify as self-hosting, since it’s a client and not a server. That’s basically just using an app on any device.
But if you could install the netflix server side software and connect it to your own media library and access it with your own local clients, then you’d be literally self-hosting netflix, indeed.
Ah, but I control if the client application is installed or not. And technically Netflix did allow downloading content for offline viewing - as long as you had an account (don’t know if they still do).
Now both the content and the application are on your hardware. Ergo by your logic, that would be self hosting.
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.
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.
I’m going to shame people for using something that used to work well. This will help me by making me feel superior, and it will help others by shaming them. What a good idea I’ve had!
Do you really feel attacked by this post?
Attacked? No this post alone doesn’t make me feel attacked.
Though it’s about weekly that we see a post saying essentially “there’s no reason anyone should still be using Plex…”, or “jellyfin is superior to plex because of x and y”. And honestly, it’s tiring and it feels forced. Like if jellyfin were so perfect, would it really need this many posts propping it up?
Anyway, what bugged me about this post was the level of smugness. “Does Plex even count as self hosting?”, “is this really in the spirit of the community?”… God damn, that sounds like the least bearable person in the homeowners association.
Yes. Ask another question, the one we’re all aching to respond 😜
Yes
