Plex gives fans a privacy complex by sharing viewing habits with friends by default
- Reference: 1701203407
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2023/11/28/plex_privacy/
- Source link:
At the start of this month Plex [1]rolled out something called Discover Together, with an Activity feature that shows "what you and your friends are watching, rating, and saving to your Watchlists." Crucially, this functionality, which is enabled until you switch it off, sends a weekly email to your friends detailing what you have been watching on your server, and vice-versa.
And this, unsurprisingly, sparked outrage on social media and Plex's own [2]support forum , with many saying that because Plex is self-hosted, they believed it would be more respectful of privacy than other streaming services — like [3]Netflix , for example.
[4]
"This option should be off by default," one user wrote. "I was not aware this information was being collected, processed, and disseminated. This feels like an extreme breach of trust and privacy."
[5]
[6]
Also perhaps unsurprisingly, a discussion about pornography — who is watching it, whether one should be embarrassed about it, and if Plex should disclose this info — ensued. Of course, there are worse things than watching smut online.
"I already know my friends watch way more embarrassing stuff than softcore porn, like Marvel Cinematic Universe shows," one wag [7]quipped .
[8]Attacker snags account details from streaming service Plex
[9]California passes bill to set up one-stop data deletion shop
[10]'Joan Is Awful' Black Mirror episode rebounds on Netflix
[11]Google, Amazon, Microsoft make the Mozilla naughty list for Christmas shopping
Plex did not respond to The Register 's questions for this story. However, in its support forum and on Twitter, the software's developer insisted it [12]wasn't forcing this functionality on people:
"It is opt-in. To share content viewed on a Plex Media Server, you had to opt in to sync your watch history data and then also opt in to make your watch history visible to friends. Both of those were prompted in the Plex app after screens explaining the features."
[13]
That didn't fly with folks. As some have [14]argued , if the user interface makes this functionality on by default with the option to switch it off, it is still opt out rather than opt in.
Someone going by the handle [15]fog673 even helpfully documented the new [16]workflow here : after opening Plex, the software pops up a series of screens about this feature allowing you to discover what your friends are watching, and then says the user is "in control" while making sharing viewing habits to friends on by default.
If the user clicks through this window to get back to viewing media, they'll be automatically opted into the feature. If the user pauses to review the settings, they can switch it off right there and then.
[17]
It's enough to bamboozle at least some netizens. In an email to The Register , one reader told us: "I received an email of someone's viewing habits and they had no idea it was being sent."
And according to another Plex customer: "When the user doesn't touch anything, but the OK button, the setting is set to 'Friends' unless he ACTIVELY changes that setting." In other words: it sounds more like an opt-out than an opt-in, which is not a best practice when it comes to privacy or keeping customers happy.
A Plex employee, replying to a support forum thread, directed those upset by this sharing of viewing habits to "tweak your email preferences (including the weekly review)" by visiting [18]this link . ®
Get our [19]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.plex.tv/blog/discover-together/
[2] https://forums.plex.tv/t/weekly-review-emails-data-leak/860206/32
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/26/joan_black_mirror_terms/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2ZWZxFo4sRQlouh2L3teX@QAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZWZxFo4sRQlouh2L3teX@QAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZWZxFo4sRQlouh2L3teX@QAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://twitter.com/ChadAChavez/status/1729361177543573639
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/08/24/data_breach_plex_hack/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/18/california_passes_bill_to_set/
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2023/06/26/joan_black_mirror_terms/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2023/11/15/google_amazon_microsoft_mozilla/
[12] https://twitter.com/plex/status/1729242241112412386?s=20
[13] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44ZWZxFo4sRQlouh2L3teX@QAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[14] https://twitter.com/vnen/status/1729550031106007277
[15] https://forums.plex.tv/u/fog673
[16] https://forums.plex.tv/t/weekly-review-emails-data-leak/860206/255
[17] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_security/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33ZWZxFo4sRQlouh2L3teX@QAAAFU&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[18] https://www.plex.tv/email-preferences/
[19] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Does it require a cloud account?
The worst part of any of these systems is you have to pay for them on top of them spying on you. You should assume that if they require activation of licensing, they are watching and logging everything they can. I'll continue to use my free alternatives, that do require more work to get set up initially, but do not come with subscription payments or data disclosure.
If your media server software requires a constant internet connection to even use the thing, it is worthless, in my eyes. 99% of my media viewing is from within my LAN, so it does not REQUIRE internet access.
I
Why do companies think we care what anyone else is doing?
This type of thing really annoys me. Why do these companies think we care about what other people are doing? I am amazed at the number of services that do this type of thing.
I mean who sits there in a design meeting and says " You know wht this services needs? The ability to tell other folk what you are watching". The only people, in my view, to be bigger idiots are thise that nod and go "Yes!!! That's it!".
The mind truly boggles at the stupidity of it all.
Re: Why do companies think we care what anyone else is doing?
They don't. It's just an excuse to sell your viewing data to advertisers.
Re: Why do companies think we care what anyone else is doing?
"Okay new idea. We're all too individualist and lonely now. Let's try to bring back the experience of crowding around the only telly in the house with a bunch of friends and family, like the good old days. TV viewing should be social again!"
* mildly sceptical nods and agreement *
"All those boring modern sitcoms recorded without laugh tracks? What if your friends were laughing along with you? Let's record an audio stream from each person's viewing and dub a mix of them into future viewings of that media. So you can hear your friends laughing along at the same jokes with you. You can hear in the quiet bit of the movie when one of your friends leans back in their creaky armchair and cracks open another beer. Maybe you'd like to do the same? You can hear when they're completely bored by the trash they're watching and decide to call their mother and check in about those gallstones.."
* frightened silence *
"Great. Could we get a first shot at this implemented by next week?"
Jellyfin all the way
Sadly undernourished financially precisely because it doesn't use such underhanded funding manoeuvres, it manages to do precisely what it should do - without any privacy compromises.
Joke's on them
I have no friends.
Never heard of jellyfin before. Just checked it out and it looks extremely cool. I will check it out for my home server needs.
"on by default"
So, Plex has joined Facebook, uh, sorry, Meta, in the screw-your-users-we're-selling-advertising-data market.
On by default. And you can turn it off. Yeah, sure, until the next update resets it to on. Oops, sorry, "honest" mistake, we won't do it again. At least not until the next update . . .
Ah, Zuckerberg, who would have guessed that a uni drop-out like yourself would be a trendsetter in the 3rd millenium ?
Okay, the wrong type of trend, but still . . .
I used to be involved with 'emby' back in the late 2000's when it started off as a plugin called video browser for Vista Media Centre... It later became Media Browser or 'MB' and later 'emby'
I left many years ago after butting heads with some others over the stupidity of certain design and direction choices.... in spite of being shouted down, screamed at and called all sorts of unpleasant things. Every single suggestion I made to streamline the UI and make the interface work better... was quietly implemented.
But I'd had enough of people who could program but had little idea about decent UI design... I like to think I influenced them enough to push it in the right direction... But there still seems to be an element that is stuck in the 'if it works on a touchscreen it's good enough for everything' mentality.
Even given my gripes with some of the idiots running the show over there at emby... I'd still choose it over anything else, because it's not harvesting your data, it's not sharing that data insidiously with everyone else and this is not the first time plex has introduced some nasty little tracking 'feature' into their software.
I've also got a lifetime sub because of that involvement and years of testing and developing it.
So my suggestion is ditch plex, give emby a try... heck, even give jellyfin a try (it's a fork of emby after all), it's lacking a lot of the features..
I have tried Plex... I switched to it and ran it alongside emby for about 6 months after I cut ties... there were many things to like about it back then. But... that was also when they decided to introduce their first attempt at tracking what users were watching and storing on their media servers... so I dropped it there and then.