This is simply a rehash/summary of an original article on 404media. Beyond that, you would have to be living under a rock to think that Plex was interested in what their users actually wanted. I ran a Plex server for years until I got fed up with trying to turn off some new self serving misfeature with every new update. It's been clear for years that offering a self hosting media server solution is simply a bridgehead for Plex to seek every more revenue opportunities, even for paying victims customers. I moved to and recommend Jellyfin- comparable user experience (minus the crap), use the same library, apps for all your devices, open source and completely self contained.
I'll admit this feature should have definitely been opt-in. But when the update came out there was a big pop-up on your screen when you logged in. Where you just turned all of this off and hit save. It is super easy to disable.
The sharing what I watch with friends part is dumb. But it is pretty cool how you can recommend stuff to friends.
If you're using Plex for porn and also adding friends on it, what were you thinking in the first place? Like, it was so obvious something like this was going to happen, and that's besides the already existant risk of accidentally sharing the wrong library with your friend.
It's a cool feature, it obviously would have been better if it filtered by age rating or adult film by default to begin with but I really see this as an overreaction.
I’m a little shocked at how difficult it seems to be to find instructions on how to disable this feature. Pretty sure I got it, but it wasn’t a feature called discover together but a series of sharing options.
Stuff like this really makes me want to switch to jellyfin, but I watch stuff from me and my friend groups libraries and Plex lets me search for shows across my entire friend group at once. I'm afraid I'll be waiting forever for jellyfin to allow federating servers so that bob@red.instance can share a library with alice@blue.instance allowing Alice to browse red+blue instance content from their home instance UI instead of requiring an account with every instance.
While it should have been opt-in it is not that dramatic. The server owner can see what is played anyways. And since the primary use case is a home and friends setup it is vastly different to a Netflix scale privacy break.
Article says if you added "friends" to share what you're watching, those are the only ones who get the email about what their "friends" are watching...
And it just reports content on your Plex that's registered on IMDB...
Like, it's not plex spying on your search history and reporting what pron you like to your friends.
If you have porn on your plex:
Why?
Maybe don't sign up "friends" so they can see what you're watching...