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?

  • EmotionalSupportBees@lemmy.todayEnglish
    46·
    10 hours ago

    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”

    • Bobby@leminal.spaceEnglish
      53·
      10 hours ago

      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.

      • EmotionalSupportBees@lemmy.todayEnglish
        33·
        10 hours ago

        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

        • German The Jackal@pawb.socialEnglish
          2·
          7 hours ago

          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.