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?


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 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.
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!