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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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!
Plex technically IS self-hosting but the significance of self is pretty low as Plex has a lot of control over it.
Yes
It’s self hosting by the literal definition that you host the server yourself.
That it’s closed source and sends all kinds of data to another server is an entirely separate (and valid) concern.
As much as I agree with the concerns around Plex, I would rather we didn’t start gatekeeping the self hosting community with arbitrary requirements and grey lines around what is and isn’t “true self hosting” or whatever. I would far rather we inform people and let them make their own choices about what they want to host on their private devices and networks.
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.
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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).
Mine works when the internet is down. Why doesn’t yours?
Because they’re a silly goose who never learned to google
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 Jellyfin and never looked back.
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.
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.
If you are hosting software services (proprietary or not) on hardware you control, in a network you control, then you are self-hosting. What the service itself actually is is irrelevant.
Is <insert thing here> really Self Hosting?
I don’t really get hung up on the nomenclature and definitions. If you run your services off of a VPS and call it selfhosting, more power to you. No skin off my nose. If you run your services off of a homelab rack that dims the lights whenever you power it on and you call it selfhosting, more power to you. If you’re running your services off of an old repurposed, disposable vape unit, and you call it selfhosting, git sum. It’s a big umbrella and we can all coexist without nitpicking each other. Gatekeeping is something I don’t do, and it gets tiresome to hear others regurgitate the same trope over and over again.
ETA: @CallMeAl@piefed.zip, nice profile shot.
If you run your services off of a homelab rack that dims the lights whenever you power it on
If you are in this situation, then you definetly should get some more power, or at least a UPS to make sure you don’t trip a breaker.
Ooohhhhh, now I get it.
My first thought was dimming the lights like when a movie starts and that seemed silly.
Hey if you like a more intimate setting when you’re with your server, far be it from me to interfere. Throw on a little Barry White and some Ottis Redding and git sum.
@irmadlad This is such a great idea. I sometimes tell my rack, “you are my everything” and I give it whatever it wants. I’m about to reposition some of the equipment. That is plenty intimate enough to play Barry White.
Bow Chicka Wow Wow
Also make sure you don’t have a loose neutral somewhere 😬
If you are in this situation
It was a whimsical exaggeration.
It was a whimsical exaggeration.
… Taken to it’s logical conclusion and combined with snarky, but mildly helpful, advice.
As is tradition.
Achtually, if the lights dim less power to him.
No, no, he needs more power if the lights are dimming! That means the servers are hungry!
Yeah this is where I am at too, it’s more about who is responsible when it breaks for me and if Plex breaks I have to fix it no matter where it runs. This community is more about learning how to do it than what specific tools to use for me as well, all tools come and go over a long enough timeframe, this is a good place to learn about the next one.
The gates hath been declared open!
Back in the late 60s, I heard a song by Jimi Hendrix called ‘If A 6 Were 9’. One line has stuck with me for decades and I’ve pretty much lived my life this way:
I got my own life to live. I’m the one that’s gonna have to die when it’s time for me to die. So let me live my life the way I want to.
im out here wondering why anyone would hand anyone credit card information to watch already downloaded pirated content.
open source to me means open source, not open/paywall/ source.
i prefer my open source free with a lil jank. as god intended.
Because I’m lazy and want to be able to watch my stuff from anywhere, and let my friends access my library easily across all their devices.
Setting up Jellyfin for remote access is not trivial. Maybe for a lot of self hosting people it’s fairly simple, but it’s not nearly as simple as just downloading and running the Plex server software.
I paid for a lifetime account when it was 250, and I felt like it was worth it. At 750 like it is now, I probably would actually have considered figuring out Jellyfin. As with everything, it’s a money/time analysis and it’s less of my time to host Plex.
I have both specifically for this reason.
Plex is for my family who only need to know ‘login to your Plex account’, but I personally use Jellyfin because I’m on my VPN. I got the lifetime pass for under $100 ($80?) and it has saved me a lot of time by preventing technical issues that would need my personal attention.
Exactly this. Jellyfin shouldn’t be available externally (even with a reverse proxy!) which means a personal VPN is your only realistic option for remote access. But that means you can only remotely access it on devices that can run a VPN. So grandma’s smart TV is probably disqualified.
Plex makes remote sharing much easier, so it’s what I use for friends and family. I got the lifetime pass like a decade ago, and I have gotten my money’s worth out of it a hundred times over. Luckily, Plex and Jellyfin will happily exist side-by-side, so there’s no real reason for me to choose one or the other.
I won’t make any claims about other users, but I am using Plex for 100% legally obtained media, mostly by means of ripping physical media that I still have on my shelf. So, not everybody is using it for pirated content.
Due to the DMCA by circumventing the copyright to rip your DVDs you are technically breaking the law. You would most definitely be considered a pirate.
Some people do not live in the US.
Surprise, DMCA exists in one form or another depending on what county you are from. Thanks to WIPO around 200 countries have similar laws.
https://www.wipo.int/en/web/about-wipo/member-states
Is your country on this list?
I guess that depends on your definition of “piracy”… is it “breaking the law” or is it “stealing”?
In any case, the point I was making is that some people use Plex with non-stolen media. I mostly see assumptions that it’s only used for stolen media, so I wanted to offer a counter-example.
If by “your definition of piracy” you mean your country’s laws surrounding it, then in the USA you would still be breaking the law. The FBI anti-piracy warning that they put at the beginning of movies to warning you about the anti-piracy laws specifies that the unauthorized reproduction OR distribution of copyrighted works is illegal.
I’ve got no moral qualms about the way I’m handling things, nor am I judging anybody for the way they handle things. My comment was simply meant to show that not everybody is using Plex for stolen media.
Piracy is infringing on copyright. Ripping DVDs is most definitely consider a form of piracy. Although without sharing it, I think a jury could see it as non-infringing personally.
I do agree there is a huge difference between ripping media and downloading/sharing it as far as civil liability goes.
I take some umbrage with calling either ripping or downloading stealing though as it does not deprive the owner of their property. The correct term would be commercial copyright infringement.
Technically recording TV on VHS is piracy, but in practice no one is getting sued for it.
No it isn’t
To this point Congress was ready to eliminate the VHS home taping technology. Believe it or not Mr. Rogers came in to save the VHS from regulation death because he believed parents could record shows to watch with their children.
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/29686/how-mister-rogers-saved-vcr
Notable quotes
“The VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.” - Jack Velanti
“I have always felt that with the advent of all of this new technology that allows people to tape the ‘Neighborhood’ off-the-air … they then become much more active in the programming of their family’s television life. Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been ‘You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions’ … I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important.” - Mr. Rogers
Good for you. Now, about those torrents…
Not sure if you’re implying that I torrent my media… but just to be clear I don’t torrent.
Nope, I was talking about me.
By definition, you are a pirate for ripping your purchased physical media! One can only imagine the depravity of then hosting that content for others! Straight to jail!
Good for you. Now, about those torrents…
It’s not just about watching content, but also about having it neatly organised with your watch history tracked in a easy to use interface. And on top of that, making it easily accessible to friends/family with minimum effort.
open source to me means open source, not open/paywall/ source.
It sure means that, but not quite sure why this is relevant. There is obviously a big overlap between self-hosters and foss enthusiast on lemmy, but for me they are unrelated.
… well, at some point any hobby grows to the point where purists show up.
There’s give and take with everything. Is it “self” hosted if you rely on Docker - a 3rd party with control over their own infrastructure? Or hosting it on a Debian OS? Is it really “private” if it’s connected to the internet at all?
Are you running the Plex Server application on some hardware so other devices can access the library? Hey, that’s self-hosting. That’s it.
I guess I’m not selfhosting at all, I use a power grid that I don’t control.
It’s not truly self hosting unless you start by creating the universe.
Edit: Balls, @gedfromgont@piefed.ca beat me to it. That’ll teach me to riff on Sagan quotes before I scroll down in the thread.
Have you mined the minerals though?
Or to put it in another way “to truly selfhost you need to start by creating the universe”.
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I don’t think there are any hard and fast rules for what is self hosting. Lots of people use cloudflare, which would fail both of your criteria as well.
At least with Plex/cloudflare/others, your overall control and privacy is better and more in your control than it would be with other non-self hosted alternatives.
Plex specifically is the worst of both though. You have to host all of your own data, and pay Plex for the privilege, but they maintain control of virtually everything you can do with it.
I specifically asked about the criteria from this community’s own sidebar because that’s what I’m interested, what is self hosting “in the spirit of this community?”
Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems like your reply ignores my actual question for discussion.
The description of this community is not a hard rule written in stone, and I would treat it as more of a vibe than a criteria.
If you want to take it literally, then yes, Plex doesn’t count, neither does cloudflare or wordpress. And many other proprietary systems commonly used by the self hosting community.
But I think the spirit of this community is a bit more loose, and there is room for the likes of Plex.
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 running 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.
Oh, good point. I’ll have to get some RDP CAL licenses or something.
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.
It’s why I also consider cloudflare against the spirit of the community but I’m not going to give anyone hell over doing things how they want to with their own stuff. Freedom to do things as we’d like is part of the reason why we’re all here, right?
Freedom to do things as we’d like is part of the reason why we’re all here, right?
100% and the mods are also pretty good about removing off topic posts. My question is about understanding what this community thinks and where that line to what is off topic is. There are certainly things you can do with a server at home that would be off topic for this community, right?
There are certainly things you can do with a server at home that would be off topic for this community, right?
I don’t want to hear about hosting CSM but anything else is fair game imo
Jellyfin. Have you heard about our Lord and Saviour Jellyfin? Fuck you if you don’t run Jellyfin. Emby? Never heard of it over me running Jellyfin.
You’re nothing if you don’t run Jellyfin. NOTHING.
Vulnerabilities? Yes, but who cares. What are you communist? Letting the paid software win even though it’s got better and easier security out of the box?
Yes. Ask another question, the one we’re all aching to respond 😜
Just as much as Tailscale is self hosting. Tailscale is probably more concerning from a security point of view.
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.
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.
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.
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.
