In todays episode of “Plex enshittifies” Plex employee breaks ToS.
Source: https://forums.plex.tv/t/fake-reviews-on-play-store-by-plex-staff/917736
You must log in or register to comment.
obamaaward.jpg
From the forum post:
Just because he works at Plex doesn’t necessarily make his review fake.
Yikes the copium here. Reviews are meant for users of the app, this is so incredibly biased and in bad taste. I have had my shittiest companies ask us to leave positive reviews on Glassdoor. The shittiest ones.
Maybe their big redesign that no one asked for isn’t doing well, and this is a self preservation thing, to get more people to download it. Maybe CEO asked them to. Maybe they’re just over eager. All are excuses and not valid reasons to give a rating on your own company’s product
The download functionality also has been broken for a while and not working for lots of users, even LTT made a video about it, so even if we give the benefit of the doubt that he is merely doing a “works on my machine” thing it’s not a great look
And of course the twats locked the thread.
Daily reminder, Plex fails to include a libre software license text file. We do not control it, anti-libre software.
i mean im sure they use it too and nothing they said was anything but their personal opinion so i don’t think it’s that big a deal
I fucking hate how I can’t listen to my music libraries in the main app now. I have a separate profile for other people in the house and I can’t switch profiles with plexamp.
I used plex like a decade ago is it still the only decent option for gile share streaming?
There is Jellyfin and also a paid fork of Jellyfin, forgot what it’s called, but Jellyfin is good enough imo
Never used plex. Finally got around to installing Jellyfin. Very happy with it.
Hence why you should never trust proprietary software (or even hardware if you wish)
Dude just could have said something like,“Hey, I’m a developer of Plex and have really enjoyed my experience using it. Let me know if you’d like to see something added/fixed.”
This would’ve been the best response. Leaving 5 star review on your company’s product + signalling transparency and good communication with costumers? One stone two birds.
lol, did he have the AI bros in marketing write it too? If they’re gonna do this they could at least write their own bullshit…
Marketing probably asked everyone to write a review on their internal Slack or something.
This review would have had a lot more credibility if he at least disclosed his affiliation with Plex. Instead, he posed as some unbiased rando while advertising Plex Pass. This is textbook gaslighting.
If you look on Plex’s review page in the Play Store, it’s receiving overwhelming amounts of negative reviews over the new UI changes, reliability/performance problems, and how the Lifetime Plex Pass purchase is a lifetime of regrets as they watch Plex getting worse every month by enshittifying itself.
If Plex is resorting to leaving fake reviews to save face, then this company is in deeper trouble than I thought.
This is textbook gaslighting.
Well if I spent 5 minutes instead of 0.5 minutes I might be able to find an actual text book but I think APA Dictionary of Psychology: “gaslight” is a pretty good definition:
to manipulate another person into doubting their perceptions, experiences, or understanding of events.
And it provides an example, from the original source of the term:
a wife is nearly driven to insanity by the deceptions of her husband
It is tres shitty to minimize actual abusive behavior by applying a term associated with intimate partner violence it to this minor thing which is someone posting a comment on some software he works at using an account which goes to zero effort to obfuscate that.
In penance I decree you should watch the movie https://archive.org/details/gaslight-1944 and tell me if it’s any good, I haven’t seen it yet.
Damn skippy. Gaslighting and basic ass lying are different things. But hey, it’s trendy right now. Next, we’ll find out how he’s a malignant narcissist.
Dude posted a shill review. It’s called shilling. It’s a form of lying for profit. He likely did it to advance his career or because he was afraid not to. His employer likely encouraged the action without directly ordering it.
This is the type of pedantry that annoys me and yet I admire. Bravo, good fellow, I salute you
Its literally a false review, designed to counter the multiple negative real reviews that have been left recently. Its a false narrative designed to induce the reader into doubting the ture narrative of the other genuine reviews, or possibly even influence a potential reviewer by coloring their actual experience with the app. Definitely fits the definition you posted, even if its inconsistent with the example they gave.
subtitles have completely stopped working for me :/
Community Manager: After we changed the terms of our public client to force everyone to pay for what used to be a free service, our ratings have taken a hit. If we don’t get back to at least 4.0, Google won’t feature us for free advertising. Everyone, go and leave a 5-star review.
Developers: but there are mill…
Community Manager: STOP, go and review now. scoot!
Well this thread is an absolute shitshow.
Jellyfin is great, but if you refuse to let yourself understand that Plex’s ease of setup for remote access is a point in its favour - especially when sharing with non-tech savvy people - then you’re just as bad as the supposed “Plex shills”.
Plex is well on the enshittification train, and I’ve always been a bit concerned about how private it may or may not be, but there’s absolutely no way I’d have been able to share a Jellyfin instance with my grandfather, especially as his dementia got worse.
I tried jellyfin but it isn’t even close to as a good as plex
Same as my experience
Emby’s better than both, but jellyfin folks are probably going to crucify me for saying that.
jellyfin was a fork of emby anyway, its core framework is solid.
Emby has more of the plex-like polish, but it is more closed source than I would prefer to trust with my media, so I get by with Jellyfin. It works more than well enough fro my in-home media streaming and I still run plex for my remote users as I bought a plex pass way back at the start and I’m going to use it until I simply cant anymore… which seems to be rapidly approaching.
Can’t say me remote entry isnt working. Was streaming it from my phone in the firefox and chrome browser while on the go and also from my work pc.
Can’t imagine how easier one wants it to be in comparison (it’s literally like navigating to Youtube).Samsung TVs have a Plex app, but not a Jellyfin one. Lots of people have Samsung TVs. I mean lots. Other modern TVs are likely the same, like Onn (at least the Roku TVs) last time I checked, and again they are all over. The ease-of-use factor really is a huge win for Plex.
Edit: Yes, Samsung Tizen models can try and sideload an app, but that’s not something the vast majority of people are ever going to even think about, let alone figure out how to accomplish.
Edit 2: Well shiver me timbers, Jellyfin’s on those Onn TV’s. TIL.
I believe the AndroidTV client is the only really aczively developed client.
Using roku jellyfin app daily, but I agree the fact that jellyfins app hasnt been approved for tizen yet is a point against it
Is that on an Onn TV? I might have to go check it out again. Thanks!
Yeah, I get it. I just prefer the polish.
Always funny how anyone is crucified (on Lemmy) for using Windows or (how dare you) paid and/or free proprietary software.
Yet when it comes to something like Plex they always backpedal and either state that they don’t have something like that or it’s so convenient.
If one goes on a (F)OSS crusade at least be consistent… >:(for using Windows
Has a time and place… But for the general person you can just put them in front of linux and they wouldn’t have any idea as long as they can see the chrome icon to get to facebook.
I can see that side of the discussion… Getting over the roadblock of installation… I’ve converted many people to Linux. My argument with people defending windows is that they always seem to think that “windows just works”… which it really doesn’t… or that linux sucks because of x, y, and z… and when I pull out a news article of windows having widespread issues because of “x” where x is literally the same x as they just said for linux… It’s cricket chirps all around.
Plex is convenient. It’s userbase is proof of that. Windows is convenient in that it comes pre-installed on the computer the user is using… but otherwise a user would be perfectly fine or even possibly have less issues on linux.
I don’t find that to be inconsistent.
As someone with lifetime Emby premium, I switched to Jellyfin.
Why?
Emby development is dead in the water. It works, it’s stable, but it’s treading water. And because it is partially closed source and not changing much the addon development community is not as robust. If you try it and it has what you want, it works just fine. But I want an active community making new features and developing add-ons and extending what I get out of it. I did not need premium to get a similar feature set out of Jellyfin, I am an experienced self hoster so I was able to switch without missing a beat. And now I can click a button to skip and intro, or the recap for the episode I just finished watching. And I can try the very large set of add-ons that are out there.
I as an arch using turbonerd absolutely love jellyfin and how I can make it do what I want.
I run plex too, because the support I’d have to provide to family members when they need a password reset, or the jellyfin app doesn’t work right on their new Hisense smart TV would be the death of me.
This. Having the provide the support is what stops me from dropping plex entirely. I host jellyfin for the devices I control, and plex for my family and friends, all pointing to the same media.
How so?
Yo dad, heres the login:
username: dad
password: Pa$$TheP0pIf it asks for a URL on the first screen input the following URL:
https://jellyfin.domain.tld/If you (or a relative) can’t manage that, I’d be afraid to even let you handle a car or open a bank account.
Can’t imagine you relative doesnt also have to create a plex account somewhere to then be invited to the plex share or input the URL to request access.Assuming you set it up for SSL, and you own and manage your own domain, and they’re using a computer. Easy. So for the 10% it’s cake.
How’s it look for the rest?
For the record, I fucking hate Plex.
But this is a disingenuous simplification of where the gap is.
Me, my brother-in-law, and friend all share our libraries with the same elderly relatives.
The GAP is that great grandma has to log in/out between servers to find content that may or may not be on an individual server. Plex lets you search/aggregate from all sources without having to jockey credentials and servers.
It’s not a giant ask. I heard a fucking absolutely brain-dead take that “that would require a centralized server which is against Jellyfins core ideology”.
So, I dunno. Maybe it isn’t YOUR use case, but it’s MY use case. Doesn’t make me a shill. I’m still pissed as hell.
But don’t fucking pretend that there is feature parity when there isn’t, and don’t accuse me of being a shill just because Jellyfin literally doesn’t support my use case. I WISH it did. I HATE PLEX.
The GAP is that great grandma has to log in/out between servers to find content that may or may not be on an individual server
What does this mean? I just have one Jellyfin server I put stuff on
Me, my brother-in-law, and friend all share our libraries with the same elderly relatives.
So grandma would need to switch between all three servers to access all content.
Ah okay so you have multiple servers. With only one central server stuff is pretty easy
You’re responding to the same disingenuous argument you see all over Lemmy made by folks whose jobs are in the IT field.
That being said, why hate Plex? I’m sure, like me, you’re grandfathered in. Is it fucking new users? Sure. Sucks. Not everything is a battlefield, and they’ll eventually fuck me and then I will abandon them, it is what it is. But for now, the shit just always works with almost no tweaking from me. I really can’t ask for much more. Got my mom to watch The Wire because of Plex.
I joined Plex a little at the end of 23, but only really started adding content early last year. I’m sort of glad I didn’t buy the lifetime pass, given the recent changes.
I’ve been able to share it with so many people (including tech-unfriendly family members). I guess we’ll just have to see what happens next with Plex, unless jellyfin becomes easier to set up for us less experienced home server folks…
I stopped trying to use Plex years ago (like 10) when that shit was just painful… AND they wanted to charge me for the luxury of that pain.
I’m sure it got lots better, but it left such a bad taste in my mouth at the time I’ve gone without easy media watching instead, and tried all sorts of things.
Hopefully Jellyfin keeps improving. I’d rather donate to them every year than pay a sub to Plex.
Glad it’s worked for you though, and I mean that. When Plex worked for me, it was pretty good.
They won’t even get to the login screen.
All my relatives seem to have Hisense VIDAA TVs. There’s a plex app on the store. Jellyfin would require an external device like a Chromecast or HTPC to use it.
But now telling then it’s $3/month to watch my pirated movies? No bueno.
And on topic, I develop a commercial app and there is no way I am dropping a rating or review on it.
I don’t disagree with you, at all. But what’s the $3/mo subscription you’re talking about? I haven’t had a Chrome/Firestick/whatever since like 2012, so I’m out of the loop
But now telling then it’s $3/month to watch my pirated movies? No bueno.
I lol’d at this I won’t lie.
Oh cool so you’re ok with opening ports on your server to the internet with no authentication. Good for you. Most of us with the technical knowledge of hosting a media server know better.
What’s not authenticated? Run it through nginx and cloudflare, what exactly am I missing?
https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/5415
A reverse proxy won’t help (unless you’re doing authentication with it). A cloudflare tunnel would help, if it requires authentication.
Neither helps because jellyfin doesn’t work with auth in front of it. https://github.com/jellyfin/jellyfin/issues/13751
And any auth mechanism breaks EVERY app even if you implement one that doesn’t break the web UI. (short of VPN or other similar type of auth’d tunneling).
Fortunately, jellyfin loads fine behind an nginx proxy using basic auth.
Sounds like it works fine in the scenario I was discussing.
Ah yes, single cherry picked sentence… Care to read the very next line? Where “unfortunately, […]”… Is that “shit doesn’t load right?” Weird.
Do you know of any apps that support basic auth input for jellyfin? No… Weird? What did I say again?
Oh right, I can just scroll up and read it.
And any auth mechanism breaks EVERY app even if you implement one that doesn’t break the web UI.
Oh no, Chinese hackers know I only like the first 8 seasons of The Simpsons!
They would, I suppose, were my Jellyfin available to anyone living outside of my own state via geoblocking. You can’t even connect to it from the country I host the proxy from, not that they’d do anything if they could, all of the data shared is read-only.
I would’ve just let my setup be open, but, like you said, most of us with the technical knowledge of hosting a media server know better.
edit: chill with the downvotes, lads. Season 9 isn’t completely terrible.
I work at a brewery. Am I not allowed to tell people I like the beer I brew? I’m doing this very wrong I guess my brewery has been enshittified by me. Bummer
Am I not allowed to tell people I like the beer I brew?
That’s not really what he’s doing though. It would be like if you pretended to be a customer and drink your own beer in front of actual customers and were like “WOW! This beer is super good! The guy who made it has a really big dick!”
It’s just shitty to do because it’s sheistery as fuck.
Plex employees totally have the right to review Plex in the store. But they should be expected to advertise that they work for Plex…because he didn’t the review loses any credibility that it had previously.
You can tell people whatever you want and they can criticize you accordingly.
If you don’t disclose your affiliation with a company that you’re shilling, rational people will criticize you for being biased and self-serving.
If you want to avoid this completely rational, acceptable, and expected criticism, then you should reveal any conflicts of interest before or during your promotion of the business.
This shouldn’t need to be spelled out for you, but this generation has been conditioned to be proud of ignorance and defending abuse.
If you leave your brewery a public review pretending to just be another customer, yeah thats pretty shitty. You kniw what you’re doing, don’t play games.
You kniw what you’re doing
Exactly. They know what they’re doing and we shouldn’t pretend that they don’t.
Scumbags are all around us, hiding in plain sight.
you know full well its not a matter of liking the product you’re affiliated with, but an undisclosed conflict of interest in an environment where people have a reasonable expectation of transparent, non-biased testimonials from normal end users, not shilling from paid employees.
I was going to say if he writes an app and doesn’t like it, something’s wrong there
Perhaps. Either way, he’s biased, and reviews should be unbiased.
They don’t need to be, as long as you disclose your bias.
Reviews of VIM will inherently be biased by interest level in keyboard only navigation. No one can critically review anything entirely without bias unless we allow for reviewers to admit their biases.
Sure, but they didn’t, and that’s the main problem here. But even if they did, it’s a bit sketchy for a commercial product.
Are you allowed to tell people that you dislike your beer, as a representative of the brewery?
Sure, but I like it. I will say I often appreciate negative feedback though. Always trying to improve
People really abuse that new and very useful word. It diminishes the usefulness.
I saw someone describe rental housing as enshittified.
No honey, it’s just shitty.
It’s very nearly a synonym for value extraction. I guess specifically it refers to the consequences of value extraction on the web, but really I think Doctorow’s whole goal with that campaign was to make people aware of how awful venture capital and value extraction really are for us. I’m less concerned with preserving a canonical definition of enshittification as I am getting people aware of the consequences of capitalist financialization. As a well-published author himself, I’m sure Doctorow is well prepared for figurative death of the author :P
