That’s a strange read on Reddit. I’ve heard people say this before, and it’s baffling.

Reddit is, and always has been, a link aggregator first and foremost. Of course it’s reposts and screenshots of others sites. That’s kind of the point. To bring you Twitter so you don’t have to actually be on twitter.

Meta realized the same thing we all realized when we came here: userbase entrenchment is significantly more difficult to overcome nowadays than it was back in the 2000s when Facebook managed to pull everyone over from Myspace.

Legitimately, it seems like the average user nowadays is so hellbent against even a modicum of inconvenience or a slightly less populated environment that they will accept literally anything. The big tech and social media platforms couldn’t shake off users if they tried anymore. They can do every every shitty, anti-user, anti-consumer thing under the sun and users will bitch about it, but never, ever try an alternative.

And that’s why these companies and their devs don’t listen to feedback anymore. Why bother?

I’m just curious what you thought might have happened to Snapchat? What app took its place in your estimation?

Plex, to it’s credit, does make streaming externally from the home network easier. Setting that up with Jellyfin is a little more involved, but it’s also free, whereas Plex will make you pay for that. But if you have no desire to stream outside the home, it’s not an issue.

Jellyfin apps on other platforms are a bit of crab shoot. Some are maintained very well, some (like the Android TV version) have fewer mainteners and go a long time without updates or fixes. For most users, they’re perfectly adequate, but it’s something to be aware of.

Plex’s app support on various platforms is better, but much less controllable and customizable. That goes for the main UI as well. It’s polished but you’re stuck with whatever Plex decides to put there. You can customize Jellyfin much more, strip out things you don’t want, etc. You can apply custom CSS, too.

Plex is a business, and therefore it has things it wants you to see whether you like it or not. The enshitification of its UI will get worse overtime, as happens to all for-profit tech company products, but for the time being it’s tolerable. Just don’t get too comfy.

Overall I’d suggest Jellyfin for most in-home use cases, and if you’re comfortable managing external connections (and the security of it). If don’t have the time or knowledge to manage this beyond powering it on, open the wallet and go with Plex. But there’s no reason to pay a subscription for something your home equipment and your Internet connection are all doing on their own if you can spare a little time to set it up.

The commenter didn’t bother to ask what OP’s familiarity with any of this was, just said “build a thing”.

Not everyone that wants to start self-hosting needs to start building shit from day 1. Training wheels are ok.

Maintaining a web browser is an intensely cost and time prohibitive endeavor, especially nowadays. The FOSS community can maintain a lot of things but the sheer scale of Firefox, the need for expertise, the necessary labor, it just can’t be done by volunteers and donations, at least not without using Chromium. They have to get a cash infusion from somewhere.

I don’t like it anymore than you do but ultimately the issue isn’t Mozilla, it’s the state of the technology market. Silicon Valley is no place for a non-profit organization right now, no matter how much we need it.

What we need is regulations and anti-trust, but even that may not truly save us.

They need money. That’s it. That’s the long and short of it.

The bottom line is, they started something that’s bigger than them, and created more than enough tools to fork from them if they become a problem.

I always like to point to Emby/Jellyfin as a perfect example of how this is supposed to work. They created something excellent, the community joined in, and it got popular. Then the maintainers decided to try and cash in, and the community immediately responded by forking into what would become Jellyfin. And nowadays, the discussion is between Plex vs Jellyfin, you rarely ever hear people talk about Emby anymore.

After a certain point of user adoption, FOSS (and copy-left) software should be able to stand on it’s own without the creator’s direct involvement. The community can take the wheel if necessary. The Lemmy devs have provided enough tools to do exactly that, and I believe there are more than enough experienced devs in this community that we would not struggle to find the necessary talent.

That’s doesn’t mean there isn’t still a risk, though. This is social media, the technology is only half the story. The other half is getting people to move. I don’t think I need to explain to anyone here how hard it is to get an entrenched user base to abandon a platform whose mainteners have gone off the rails.

People suggest this all the time, but it’s only useful if you’re the only one who is going to be accessing your library externally. Otherwise you have to get family or friends who you let access your server to use it anytime they want to stream, and that’s far easier said than done. They have to know what they’re doing.

It also means they can’t stream on their smart TVs or streaming boxes. You know, the things most people will want to watch this content on.

I can’t remember exactly what it was (Emby?) but I distinctly remember one time having my ticket closed because they scoured the log and found mention of a torrented file. They basically had rules that stated if the logs showed evidence of certain things, they’d outright refuse to assist you. Not sure how common that is though.

Sometimes there’s also just file or directory names I’d rather not reveal. So I’ll do a find/replace with some generic titles. But nothing gets deleted outright.

This is why you always have a customer service team. You need a layer of people that can actually have a modicum of respect for the user base between them and the devs, or at least the illusion of it.

There’s some FOSS software I’d be happy to support financially if it weren’t for how rude and unhelpful the devs and their chosen spokespersons are. I won’t name them and start fights, but if you’re here on self hosted, you might have an idea who I’m talking about. I know it’s hard work and they’re doing it for free but the poorly-conceiled contempt for users that have anything to say except “Thanks, your the best” is a very ugly look, and it’s unfortunately pretty common. It’s not endearing, makes me less likely to want to help out.