this post was submitted on 29 May 2025
1556 points (97.5% liked)

Selfhosted

46654 readers
462 users here now

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.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Text:

I consent to Plex to: (i) sell certain personal information (hashed emails, advertising identifiers) to third-parties for advertising and marketing purposes; and (ii) store and/or access certain personal information (advertising identifiers, IP address, content being watched) on my device(s) and share that information with Plex’s advertising partners. This data is used to deliver personalised ads and content, ad and content measurement, audience insights and product development. Your consent applies to all devices on which you have Plex installed. You can withdraw your consent at any time in Account Settings or using this page.

Soure: https://www.plex.tv/vendors/ (Might have to clear cache)

Can also read about the changes here: https://www.plex.tv/about/privacy-legal/

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] rfr_Foglia@feddit.it 51 points 4 days ago (64 children)

Can someone clue me in on the reason why anyone would prefer Plex instead of Jellyfin?

[–] CatDogL0ver@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Jellyfin is not as easy as Plex to use. Many of us are not that technically advanced

[–] Luffy879@lemmy.ml 5 points 4 days ago (3 children)

If you are advanced enough to run a docker image with Plex, you can do the same with Jellyfin

[–] rfr_Foglia@feddit.it 2 points 3 days ago

You don't even have to use docker for Jellyfin, you can install the server as a regular program

[–] CatDogL0ver@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago

What is a docker? Plex is just a few clicks.

[–] Nutteman@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

My first time fucking around with Plex did NOT include docker. I googled what docker was like 9 times over the course of stupid few months cause I just didnt understand it. Now I do, and I run it via a docker stack but very very few beginners are gonna go for docker.

[–] Luffy879@lemmy.ml -1 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Then how did you use Plex? Did you even RTFM?

[–] Nutteman@lemmy.world 4 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Since I originally started using it on my everyday use Windows PC via an exe, no I did not hahahaha. Now I have it running in Open Media Vault on my NAS.

[–] Luffy879@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago

You can run Jellyfin as exe too.

[–] infinitesunrise@slrpnk.net 3 points 4 days ago

You can run plexserver as a service outside of docker. That's how I ran it years ago, before I got comfortable with docker.

[–] Nutteman@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

Lmao I dont know how stupid got used in my reply, made me sound angry

[–] SaneMartigan@aussie.zone 3 points 4 days ago

I use samba (file sharing) and vlc.

[–] golden_zealot@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

I went to the Jellyfin landing page, went to the install instructions, copy pasted and ran literally one command, opened it in a browser, made my local account, clicked a button to point it at my media folders and then I was done.

What isn't easy?

[–] JordanZ@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Sharing it with people outside your house. Added hardships if behind CGNAT.

I’ll edit this…sharing it securely outside of your house. Just port forwarding to the box and saying have at it isn’t really a great idea.

[–] golden_zealot@lemmy.ml -1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

UpNp or port forwarding is the same way both Plex and Jellyfin work.

I don't know what makes Jellyfin less secure since they both work the same way for this as far as I can tell...

Can you be more specific about what makes Jellyfin less secure when it comes to UpNp/port forwarding?

In the case of port forwarding at least Jellyfin is open source and has more eyes on it so it's less likely for someone to zero day it and have at it unless I have misunderstood how each can connect off-network.

Furthermore the hash for your password is stored along with many others at a single (or relatively few) attack point/s on a Plex business server since it's a centralized business whereas this is never the case for Jellyfin.

Also this thread is about Plex literally selling your personal data so I don't really consider Jellyfin worse for exposing your personal data.

I'll take my chances with a single idiot who want's to compromise my poor asses tiny network versus an actual hacker who wants to compromise an enterprise businesses network that is storing thousands or hundreds of thousands of user credentials, data, and payment information (Which Jellyfin doesn't store even half of).

If someone hacks Jellyfin on my network -> They have my... media files? Maybe the hash of the one password I use there?

If somone hacks Plex on my network or anywhere - or the people they sold that data to -> They have my password hash, credit card number and probably my name that is associated to it, personal data that Plex is selling, etc.

TL:DR I think Plex is more likely to be hacked rather than myself and the outcome of Plex getting hacked is worse than if my personal Jellyfin server gets hacked.

[–] JordanZ@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

With a fresh install of Plex you can still connect to it remotely…with no ports open. It will use Plex’s relay service to make the connection. That has limited bandwidth so it’s rarely anybody’s long term choice but it works right out of the box.

If you do choose to open a port then Plex partnered with Let’s Encrypt and Digicert to setup and maintain all the certs for you. So at least your connections are encrypted provided you use one of the many apps that support secure connections.

Is that the most secure way to run Plex? No. But it’s a couple steps in the right direction for basically zero effort on the server admin and users part.

You might not like the centralized auth of Plex but I don’t have to manage user accounts/passwords for people and deal with distributing them. Just send an invite to their email, they set it all up, and I never need to know about it. They forgot a password?…I never need to know about it.

[–] golden_zealot@lemmy.ml 1 points 3 days ago

I see, thanks.

load more comments (60 replies)