this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
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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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[–] bitwolf@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

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:

  1. the Plex magic proxy
  2. combined libraries
  3. Easy to use apps because of 1

Its a matter of not having these being more annoying than Plex is.