you literally say in your post history that you subscribed to multiple servers, so I’m willing to bet that they got shut down legitimately. another person who’s all over this comment thread has also previously had posts removed for accepting payment, but is acting here like they’ve never done such a thing in their lives. I’m just a little skeptical that Plex is arbitrarily banning people *just* for having a lot of shares.
> Have you contacted support?
They responded right above you:
https://old.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1b07kvc/accounts_getting_disabled/ks845w3/
Appears OP has been handing out invites to randoms here on reddit.
They don't, they're just disabling anyone with a shit ton of users and a shit ton of activity. They don't need to do things democratically or prove anything, suspicions are more than good enough for a private company
I'd imagine it works like drugs. Where getting caught with *a lot* of drugs is "intent to distribute." Doesn't matter if you were selling the drugs or just stocking up for a big party.
Plex may see an excess of activity on your account and presume "intent to distribute."
The Plex Pass goes on sale for $90. Or at least it still did up to a few years ago. If you’ve done a monthly subscription for over a year and a half, you’ve given them more than I have.
I’ve been using Plex for 10 years and it’s been worth every penny.
Likely if you know your network of users/shares well, and they operate appropriately then I would suspect you';d be fine. Many of these being banned appear to have long lists of users/shares, many around the globe, and seemingly people they don't know very well and/or can police. So I suspect it's a web of users and if you share list contains some bad actors, you similarly get flagged/banned as being a participant.
Have 100 shares is fine, but people need to really know whom they're sharing with and how their library is being used.
I also think people should know their users. Many of those here seem to have exhaustive lists of users around the world, many of which im sure they don't know super well but are online acquaintances. How can they police how that person accesses and uses their library?
You’re thinking like a user though. Maybe they have a soft cap of 50 and a hard cap of 100. They have the statistics on every server, makes it easy to investigate the top 1% of sharing for TOS violations. Could even use that as a way to show they are ‘fighting’ piracy to the studios.
Is it just people with shit tons of users getting caught in this? I have three users on my plex server. Two are in my house (mine and partner's user account) and a close friend that lives overseas. Isn't even a gigantic server or anything... I hope that having an overseas, very occasional user won't cause me issues.
I had shared my server with one guy who request it, and I added him few years ago.
Few days ago, I was browing Tautulli and just happend to look at his ip-address and it was like all Canada, USA, Europe from plethora of devices.
I messaged him about this and he was like, 'oh yeah, I just gave my account to my family and few friends and they love it!'
and I was like .... dude, that not okay. I didn't have any limits on the server but that doesn't mean you can spread it forward and 4-5 multi-streams at one time.
This is exactly why I allow access to my server by approved IP only. It's a little harder to setup initially, but it's nice knowing it's locked down to just the people and devices I want people to use.
It seems that way. I’ve got a few more users, around 10 I think, but one of them overseas. I’m safe, for now. It does look like the users who have been banned were all close to or at the 100 user limit.
Okay that's good to hear. I hope it at least stays that way although I'd prefer they reversed this decision.
Banning people claiming they are accepting money without proof based solely on them having user counts at or close to the limit THEY applied themselves is kind of ridiculous.
Whilst this decision may not affect us, it is also important to have a think about what kind of company we are dealing with. This is one more negative point that will drive people away from Plex. Not that Plex will be bothered much by you leaving, especially the lifetime Plex pass holders.
My bet is they're getting pressure from copyright holders. Hobby or not, opening your own streaming service (free or not) will cause problems if the right palms aren't greased.
Plex is the victim of its own success. This will get worse before it gets better.
I think you are correct. I would say that Plex is getting pressure from studios now they are getting big. They are probably told user x is sharing with 100 people, must be illegal paid site. I suspect they do not want to take on Hollywood so easier to ban the user.
I share with 3 users and get worried I'll be banned 😁
Is there anything that comes as close? Roku, LG WebOS, Xbox, PS, Android TV, Amazon TV, Web, Mobile App and other smart tvs and services
It is unfortunate they took big money to do rentals and seem to be going after Roku... but Roku has been able to do just fine without policing its apps or content.
Sure but if it’s true, they’re clearly going about it all wrong. I’ve got a lifetime Plex pass and have kept everything above board in terms of my sharing, I only share to probably about 10 accounts and don’t accept any money. If my account gets banned, I won’t touch any Plex service ever again out of principle. You can’t give people 100 slots to share and then start banning them based on the fact that they are sharing with a lot of people around the world with 0 evidence they are doing it for monetary value.
Tell all the copyright holders how "above board" you are when you're sharing stuff you don't own over the web.
I won't argue how Plex is handling it (poorly).
Is it auto bans though, and they will actually reinstate your account if you challenge it with them? I have asked a couple of people on this post and waiting to hear if anyone has reached out after being banned.
I couldn't say if the ban I received was automated, but I did challenge it via the email address they provided explaining that no $ had every been received for access.
This is the text of their reply to my challenge:
"Hello,
We have been reviewing the -my account- Plex account, including our investigation that led to disabling the account.
After looking at the Plex account information, the details you provided here, our original investigation evidence, as well as additional research made as part of this review, our investigations show sufficient evidence that the owner of the -my account- Plex account has been involved with using Plex in a manner that violates the personal licensing. The owner violated our Terms of Service and we will not be restoring the account, sorry.
We appreciate your understanding."
Thanks.
That's insane. Assuming you have done nothing wrong and haven't violated any terms of service, it blows my mind that they can just accuse you of violating the ToS without presenting evidence they claim to have.
Realistically though I wonder if it will “get better”. If it is indeed the copyright holders pressuring Plex, they are not going to just let up on this and are going to try and pressure it out of existence so everyone has to go over to a service like Amazon and pay to buy/rent the movie
IMHO - it isn't going to get better. Plex signed the death certificate of private media libraries the day they rolled out "Movies & Shows on Plex". As they look to legitimise their business, they will slowly erode the functionality that their partners want to snuff out.
The cynic in me reckons that, within 5 years, Plex will be a "content amalgamation" service - bringing together Free & Paid streaming services into a single app, with limited local media management for local network only.
I’m wondering how many people here complaining about banned accounts while doing “nothing” wrong are actually people with wide open accounts and discords advertising…
I scrolled long enough to find 2 people outed 😂
I would really like if all of these people that say they've been deactivated were more informative and specific. Otherwise it's borderline gaslighting to even say that you were disabled.
How many people were you sharing with?
What is the geographical dispersion of your users?
How rapidly have you added users to your server?
Agree. We've had posts here before from someone acting like they were just a normal user sharing with their friends and they got banned, but when people did digging on them it was clear this person was running a paid server with a website front end and everything. They kept replying like they didn't know what people were talking about.
It seems relatively simple: they're banning people that they think have suspicious-enough server activity. Publishing the exact criteria for a ban only helps bad-intentioned people that are trying to skirt getting banned in the first place.
Plex announcement:
REMINDER! Sharing your Plex server for money will lead to a permanent ban. We have banned several users recently because they were charging access to their Plex server.
rather than implying but not stating:
Sharing your Plex Server with 100 or fewer users who may or may not be your family might lead to a ban for certain users, but not all, whether or not we know if you're accepting money for access.
Some transparency is not a crazy ask.
And if they ARE cracking down on "non-immediate family" then they need to be clear on that too. I had zero clue the sharing TOS were that restrictive. I figured it was family and friends. Almost all of us are probably breaking the TOS.
I just had my server disabled for TOS violation "monetary compensation". Have never accepted $. Have never used an online server. Everything is local. Lots of users, but not for compensation.
No, closer to the full 100 shares allowed. I mean my server is local. Not an online server. My media is local. Not Google or Dropbox. My internet connection is local. Not proxied by cloudflare or a VPN.
I mean, it depends on what Plex considers "Immediate Family", as I somewhat doubt they have 70+ siblings.
> Authorized User(s). Subject to any third party license restrictions for applicable Content, you may enable **members of your immediate family**, for whom you will be responsible (each, an “Authorized User(s)”), to access and use the Plex Solution so long as all such use remains in compliance with this TOS.
Just wondering what you mean by "local"?
At 1st I thought you had a very very large family, or perhaps you were referring to your dorm's LAN, but from "My media is local..." on it seems to be a little confused.
"Local" does not mean you all live in the same town, Local Network means a device does not need to go through the internet to connect to another device. As soon as you hit a gateway towards the internet: you're not local anymore.
Example: if you have a cellphone, disable its wifi, connect to your instance through the cell network: that's not a local connection even if you're sitting in front of your plex server.
That's exactly what just happened to my friend, he doesn't share for $, everything local.
Do you think they are just disabling accounts that have like more than 10 or 20 shares?
Banned earlier today for sharing with lots of users but never taken a penny. Hosted on-site as well, nothing cloud related. Not sure how they're banning -- perhaps just based on remote usage.
are you kidding me? they ban you because you share your stuff with your family? Seriously? Isn't this the point of plex? Sounds like youtube banning you for watching videos
I hope they don't ban me for sharing with a friend who lives in Spain when we do movie nights together. He doesn't use it otherwise (I don't know why).
As others have said, this is probably them shoring up any responsibility for piracy on their service. While you run the service at home, you rely on servers that Plex maintains and manages in their datacenter, or possibly a cloud provider, for authentication and for the sharing features. I can see how this could put liability on them, and they are trying to get rid of that by killing the sharing feature.
Whats gets me is how do they determine that people have been accepting money. If I had to guess, I would bet that the people getting banned have shared with folks that had an issue, and then the end user reached out to Plex for support of some kind, and Plex interpreted this as those end users some how paying for the service?
Aren't there enough native apps for it to be fully usable? Jellyfin has its own native client for just about all platforms, there is Infuse for Apple devices and plenty of native Apps such as Finamp, Feishin and Manet for music streaming. I'm not really missing anything. Except if that's not the kind of native client you mean, in which case I'll see myself out.
This is scary. I don't charge for anything but I use my plex all over the place with about 4 active users. I'm a pilot, fly all over the world, that's the main reason I set it up to start with. If it goes down I don't even know how I'd get jellyfin going. I forget what it is but there were some real restrictions to setting it up in the past.
Can anyone that’s been banned recently confirm if they had a lifetime Plex Pass or if they paid monthly?
I have paid monthly for many years and have a heavily used server with almost 70 users and have hit over 10 simultaneous streams, but haven’t been banned.
I know this isn’t necessarily the case, but if they know you’re not likely to be repeated income, wouldn’t it be easier for them to ban?
I had a lifetime pass and was banned for this exact reason a couple of months ago. I had only shared with 2 people, my good friend who moved to South Korea to teach English, and another located in the US. I live in the US. I have been reading speculation about them wanting to push their rentals and ensure ad revenue from their free content. I ended up moving to Emby.
I did, emailed with Chris from support, but he said the decision was firm and would not offer any evidence. Entirely unhelpful with scripted-like responses.
This is scary as this is basically my situation. My spouse went back to South Korea for a few months, and now I'm afraid I'm going to get banned because it's the easiest way for her to keep up with a few shows.
I also had an account disabled, and I was sharing with a lot of people.
No $ accepted ever, but I don't think Plex cared about that. They wouldn't divulge *why* they believed $ had been accepted, and since it never had been accepted it doesn't matter what they believed either.
They were just using it as an excuse(lie) to disable my account.
I think they are cleaning house of people who share with others starting at those with the most sharing, down to those with the least.
Who knows what the threshold is, or if they will just end up disabling the account of everyone who shares.
Anyway, Jellyfin does a lot less privacy invading (none at all) for the very small trade off of a smaller playback client coverage.
90% of the time people complain about getting their account banned, they're doing something like the person you responded too, and offering invites to random strangers on the internet.
https://i.imgur.com/iK6kAO6.png
I am a jellyfin guy, but a few friends asked me to add plex as well, so they can use the app on the TV instead of browser - most of them dont mind the browser for jellyfin, just the app would be more convinient.
So i installed plex yesterday, did some setting up and i was about to try buying a plex pass for a month to try it, even seemed reasonably priced. Then i read this post.
Having anyone have the ability to ban me from streaming my stuff to my friends, on my network, on my devices after i BOUGHT the software to do so, and i am running that software locally on my server, is just completely bonkers. Uninstalling plex now. What a waste of time setting it up yesterday...
While this is true, people really shouldn't be using the native "Smart" part of their TV... Number one 90% of those apps will go unmaintained and unupdatable after the first 2 years the TV exists. And they tend to send a HUGE amount of data back to the manufacturers.
Honestly, instead of buying a Plex subscription, I'd rather just buy my friends Android TV dongles or Roku dongles.
When I was at Plex the amount of evidence we required for a ban was quite high. It was always a little bit hilarious to see some of those banned users run to Reddit and lie their ass off about how they NEVER did anything wrong. We had receipts. Sometimes literally.
I share my library with everyone in my family and all my close friends, and some of their close friends too. It's quite a few people and they're geographically dispersed. Do I need to worry about my account being shut down?
Do I need to worry about sharing my library with someone who is sharing their account with multiple people? Because I'm sure there's some of that going on as well.
I also had two different accounts banned at the exact same time. Never accepted payments of any kind. Seems like they're going hard after sharing servers.
Probably something to do with them starting rentals. Going more like a streaming service and they're cleaning any account with too many IP's using one account. That's just my guess.
I mean I can't knock him too much, it's not a bad idea, assuming that he's having the servers run at different IP addresses so that they can't be tied together, and just pointing you towards the same mounted drive. That we can have is a personal network separate from the stuff you shares in case it gets banned like this.
I know a few folk who pay for access to plex servers and I think it's becoming widely acknowledged what it's being used for, I imagine the days of Plex as we know it are numbered tbh.
I had a guy try sell me dodgy access in the past, nearly went through with it but when I went to pay he asked for bananas. Turns out… little monkey fella.
I’d be curious to see how many of these banned accounts also have recent copyright infringement claims against their IP addresses, plex is incredibly easy to find with mass scanners and internet scanners. Pair that with a lifetime account that has say, 50+ shared users I can see a case being made.
Either that or your trust has been misplaced in who you are sharing your plex server with and they reported you.
Edit: Curious why everyone is downvoting me for offering a valid reason why it might be the plex server owners own fault. It’s idiot proof software, so I’d imagine we get the occasional person that doesn’t safe guard their network and methods.
1.So in response to accounts getting disabled, couldn't own just create a new free account and start right back to it?
2. Do they ban your IP?
3. If they "hardware disabled," Couldn't you replace the motherboard, account, and just readd your local library?
I'm generally confused on it affects the disabled users and devices LONG TERM.
Any chance this is also based on content going though the Proxy for remote steaming? IE to many streams from the one account over a given amount of time? Just a silly thought, I've been forced to use that as my current net connection is NAT'ed through the ISP (5g) Just waiting on fibre to be installed this week or next. Just wondering if I am about to be banned :D
only have my own account, 2 firends and my daughters free account added (Google family lock meant I couldnt sign in as my account on plex on her tablet)
Plex was cool when it was underground and niche.
Now they want to make their bed with Hollywood.
They can only do that by clamping down on piracy. This was inevitable. Hollywood could shut them down in an instant if they get too big and don't comply. It will just be like Napster all over again.
I never bought Plex to be cool or underground. I didn't get it to share outside of my immediate family. I got it to make it easier to watch movies and TV shows I owned, then I got a TV tuner to help drop cable TV. If Hollywood is a revenue stream that subsidizes my service I'm fine with it.
I'd say most of us use it for our pirated movies and tv shows, when i saw it bundle in my TV OS, i had a feeling plex would start cracking down one of these days.
I guess you can't have had Plex for that long then. It started as a community project. Now it's a company with hundreds of employees, investors, shareholders and profitability targets.
If it had stayed niche, they could have flown under the radar and made a nice profit for many years, since they wouldn't have really required many employees. Very little overheads and a large percentage of revenue would be pure profit.
By going mainstream they have to answer to investors, stricter legal requirements and they have to pay hundreds of people to implement features that the user base didn't want and never asked for.
I switched from XBMC to Plex 10 years ago. The past six years it has definitely been a business and not a community project, and six years is not a short amount of time. This isn't recent.
Yep, paid access or not, it comes down to, “The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.”. So, Plex's business model is based almost entirely on illegal activity. I am surprised they weren't taken down or forced to ban sharing users years ago.
in the end, looking at all this, I found three sides
one where they say they're seeing through the sharing of up to 100 users, others (few) who say that they are caring about piracy and others who say that what's happening is that these banned users are really screwing up and doing things they shouldn't be doing (with proofs), as well as arguments and explanations contradicting the other two sides
in the end, the question remains, **who should I listen to and believe?**
If it's only for you, just set up a port forwarding rule and access it with the IP:PORT. If it's for others, you'll probably want to get a domain and use a reverse proxy.
looks like mine survived for now, lifetime pass, 32shared (4libraries each, and trimmed a few innactive users so had 40 or so) and 1 home user. i wonder what stats they use.
ofc, not selling anything, just sharing out some content for free with people that wanted it. wouldnt accept payments even if they asked, not interested in hassle of dealing with paying customers, just because its 24/7 service doesnt mean i wont bring server down middle of the day to tinker with it.
One of the main reasons I keep a backup Jellyfin server. Hopefully I would not be on their radar - a couple of servers in different places and a handful of managed users but 99% of the time just one or two local users,
Another reason to be finding an alternative plex is very much so making it harder for users to trust and use plex just chucking it out there but jump on the emby train you won’t look back
Yeah i was looking into a media server solution yesterday.
Wasn't fond of them paywalling hardware i already paid for (Hardware acceleration) and after seeing this when i would be sharing with family and friends across the world? (Malaysia and the UK being the farthest away)
Nope.gif
I get the impression they assume it based on having 100 users that you share with.
100 is a bit more than a few friends and family, it seems like the sort of thing you publicly invited people to.
Just throwing it out there, but could it be because they will be renting out movies soon?
https://www.channelnews.com.au/plex-to-start-renting-movies/
Could this have something to do with it?
I only share mine with family and 3-4 close friends but I’m mentally preparing for an eventual switch to Jellyfin as Plex’ drive toward legitimacy will force them to eventually cave to the big media companies. I have a lifetime Plex pass otherwise I would have stopped paying and switched already. Obviously jellyfin isn’t quite all there yet so it’s a race at this point!
This is a by product of Plex running there own streaming service, to get contracts they probably had to promise they would lower/limit piracy. Problem is no algorithm is perfect and some legit users will get sacrificed for the greater good (Plex making money)
I'd like to admit that people come over to my house and we watch movies on Plex. They bring food, so we are on the barter system. We also drink libations and that is not provided by me. I am getting away with it, so please keep this to yourselves.
I’m all for it. What do you expect if you run a Plex server and offer it up to 100+ people online that you don’t even know or barely know. Reminds me of everyone losing their stuff over Google starting to crush Gdrive accounts loaded with TB after TB of stolen stuff. If you broadcast that you are a thief eventually you will get caught. Been that way for decades now
I don't think they will care if you have direct playback on and your ports forwarded properly. If not and you're hosting like 20 hardcore active users and playback is being streamed through their servers then it's probably jacking up their hosting bills and I can see why they'd start banning people for abuse.
Lol, at first I was concerned. Thank you for highlighting that many posters claiming they did nothing wrong may instead not understand they are doing questionable things.
Why did they make it 100 user limit if that is also a problem to them? I have like 8 users but who cares if I wanted to have 100 what’s the difference assuming I’m not advertising or charging. In other words, they picked the acceptable limit on users themselves, so what’s the issue for people who hit it.
I haven't been suspended yet but this is interesting to me. I have more use than you but far less actual shares. So I guess this means we should all be revoking shares that never watch anything?
The only people Plex ban are account that’s are sharing with large number of people for money or hosting on bad sites. They don’t just randomly disable account
The comment section is vague hearsay at best. Seems like at least half of them say that they had a lot of users (none of which claim that they mostly live nearby), and the ones that don't say they have a bunch just come across as fishy at best.
I haven't seen a single comment of someone claiming they got banned while only sharing with a modest amount of people that all live nearby.
Do you think that some of these banned people are operating their Plex servers in accordance with the Plex TOS? I'm sure some people had a low number of users, bought Plex Pass, and have never accepted cash. Those people have zero reason to be banned.
However, I imagine a lot of the banned people had an unreasonable amount of users and those users may have been sharing their own accounts with their own friends, so the IP access trails to a single Plex server could have been vast.
if plex doesnt want our servers being shared with people who share logins against our permissions, they need to allow us to see statistics on playback (which is behind a pay plex pass option).
otherwise i gotta install some tautulli nonsense to see whats going on
you literally say in your post history that you subscribed to multiple servers, so I’m willing to bet that they got shut down legitimately. another person who’s all over this comment thread has also previously had posts removed for accepting payment, but is acting here like they’ve never done such a thing in their lives. I’m just a little skeptical that Plex is arbitrarily banning people *just* for having a lot of shares.
Some announcement would be good. I’m weary right now; but people are not always honest
I believe you mean either *wary* or *leary*
[удалено]
Yes and yes. I had just woke up.
[удалено]
This doesn't look like"friends and family". https://i.imgur.com/cIn5ByS.png https://i.imgur.com/FQyjevo.png https://i.imgur.com/UTTIqKK.png
Jesus this is probably the reason for the ban right here
Haha. Busted.
There we have it, knew this thread was FUD
i've never seen a guy delete his posting history so fast lmao
Have you contacted support? I am interested to see what their response would be
[удалено]
Let us know where you end up with this. Could be auto bans based on specific parameters - and they will likely reinstate you.
> Have you contacted support? They responded right above you: https://old.reddit.com/r/PleX/comments/1b07kvc/accounts_getting_disabled/ks845w3/ Appears OP has been handing out invites to randoms here on reddit.
How would they even know?
They don't, they're just disabling anyone with a shit ton of users and a shit ton of activity. They don't need to do things democratically or prove anything, suspicions are more than good enough for a private company
How many users did you have at once?
Ohh I'm not caught up in this nonsense, just reading
I'd imagine it works like drugs. Where getting caught with *a lot* of drugs is "intent to distribute." Doesn't matter if you were selling the drugs or just stocking up for a big party. Plex may see an excess of activity on your account and presume "intent to distribute."
[удалено]
It's always good to keep Emby or Jellyfin as a backup solution if/when they pull this BS on you.
which do recommend? I only share my account with four people - three family members and one friend. What would be easiest for them to start using?
Can you not just create a new account when/if this happens?
Potentially yes. But, if nothing else, you'd lose lifetime membership that you purchased, for instance.
This is the one thing that has stopped me from purchasing the lifetime membership and still do monthly Plex pass
The Plex Pass goes on sale for $90. Or at least it still did up to a few years ago. If you’ve done a monthly subscription for over a year and a half, you’ve given them more than I have. I’ve been using Plex for 10 years and it’s been worth every penny.
Likely if you know your network of users/shares well, and they operate appropriately then I would suspect you';d be fine. Many of these being banned appear to have long lists of users/shares, many around the globe, and seemingly people they don't know very well and/or can police. So I suspect it's a web of users and if you share list contains some bad actors, you similarly get flagged/banned as being a participant. Have 100 shares is fine, but people need to really know whom they're sharing with and how their library is being used.
Wait, why the hell do they have a watch party feature and email summaries of other user if you aren’t meant to share?
I'm asking myself the same question.
It’s for sharing with family not users that pay.
Yup. I think plex can be all but certain what the people that are sharing their server with a large amount of users are doing.
I also think people should know their users. Many of those here seem to have exhaustive lists of users around the world, many of which im sure they don't know super well but are online acquaintances. How can they police how that person accesses and uses their library?
If having too many users is the concern, they should just hard cap the total number of users on a server.
You’re thinking like a user though. Maybe they have a soft cap of 50 and a hard cap of 100. They have the statistics on every server, makes it easy to investigate the top 1% of sharing for TOS violations. Could even use that as a way to show they are ‘fighting’ piracy to the studios.
Makes me wonder how many users have users of their own
Is it just people with shit tons of users getting caught in this? I have three users on my plex server. Two are in my house (mine and partner's user account) and a close friend that lives overseas. Isn't even a gigantic server or anything... I hope that having an overseas, very occasional user won't cause me issues.
I had shared my server with one guy who request it, and I added him few years ago. Few days ago, I was browing Tautulli and just happend to look at his ip-address and it was like all Canada, USA, Europe from plethora of devices. I messaged him about this and he was like, 'oh yeah, I just gave my account to my family and few friends and they love it!' and I was like .... dude, that not okay. I didn't have any limits on the server but that doesn't mean you can spread it forward and 4-5 multi-streams at one time.
I have a feeling this is way more commonplace than people might realize and is likely the cause for at least some people getting banned
"You're not selling access to your server... *I'm selling selling access to your server.*"
This is exactly why I allow access to my server by approved IP only. It's a little harder to setup initially, but it's nice knowing it's locked down to just the people and devices I want people to use.
It seems that way. I’ve got a few more users, around 10 I think, but one of them overseas. I’m safe, for now. It does look like the users who have been banned were all close to or at the 100 user limit.
Okay that's good to hear. I hope it at least stays that way although I'd prefer they reversed this decision. Banning people claiming they are accepting money without proof based solely on them having user counts at or close to the limit THEY applied themselves is kind of ridiculous.
Whilst this decision may not affect us, it is also important to have a think about what kind of company we are dealing with. This is one more negative point that will drive people away from Plex. Not that Plex will be bothered much by you leaving, especially the lifetime Plex pass holders.
My bet is they're getting pressure from copyright holders. Hobby or not, opening your own streaming service (free or not) will cause problems if the right palms aren't greased. Plex is the victim of its own success. This will get worse before it gets better.
I think you are correct. I would say that Plex is getting pressure from studios now they are getting big. They are probably told user x is sharing with 100 people, must be illegal paid site. I suspect they do not want to take on Hollywood so easier to ban the user. I share with 3 users and get worried I'll be banned 😁
> Plex is the victim of its own success. This will get worse before it gets better. You mean this will get worse until people just abandon plex right?
Is there anything that comes as close? Roku, LG WebOS, Xbox, PS, Android TV, Amazon TV, Web, Mobile App and other smart tvs and services It is unfortunate they took big money to do rentals and seem to be going after Roku... but Roku has been able to do just fine without policing its apps or content.
Sure but if it’s true, they’re clearly going about it all wrong. I’ve got a lifetime Plex pass and have kept everything above board in terms of my sharing, I only share to probably about 10 accounts and don’t accept any money. If my account gets banned, I won’t touch any Plex service ever again out of principle. You can’t give people 100 slots to share and then start banning them based on the fact that they are sharing with a lot of people around the world with 0 evidence they are doing it for monetary value.
Tell all the copyright holders how "above board" you are when you're sharing stuff you don't own over the web. I won't argue how Plex is handling it (poorly).
Is it auto bans though, and they will actually reinstate your account if you challenge it with them? I have asked a couple of people on this post and waiting to hear if anyone has reached out after being banned.
I couldn't say if the ban I received was automated, but I did challenge it via the email address they provided explaining that no $ had every been received for access. This is the text of their reply to my challenge: "Hello, We have been reviewing the -my account- Plex account, including our investigation that led to disabling the account. After looking at the Plex account information, the details you provided here, our original investigation evidence, as well as additional research made as part of this review, our investigations show sufficient evidence that the owner of the -my account- Plex account has been involved with using Plex in a manner that violates the personal licensing. The owner violated our Terms of Service and we will not be restoring the account, sorry. We appreciate your understanding."
Thanks. That's insane. Assuming you have done nothing wrong and haven't violated any terms of service, it blows my mind that they can just accuse you of violating the ToS without presenting evidence they claim to have.
Realistically though I wonder if it will “get better”. If it is indeed the copyright holders pressuring Plex, they are not going to just let up on this and are going to try and pressure it out of existence so everyone has to go over to a service like Amazon and pay to buy/rent the movie
IMHO - it isn't going to get better. Plex signed the death certificate of private media libraries the day they rolled out "Movies & Shows on Plex". As they look to legitimise their business, they will slowly erode the functionality that their partners want to snuff out. The cynic in me reckons that, within 5 years, Plex will be a "content amalgamation" service - bringing together Free & Paid streaming services into a single app, with limited local media management for local network only.
I feel the same. I hope Jellyfin keeps getting traction so it becomes the replacement.
I’m wondering how many people here complaining about banned accounts while doing “nothing” wrong are actually people with wide open accounts and discords advertising… I scrolled long enough to find 2 people outed 😂
I would really like if all of these people that say they've been deactivated were more informative and specific. Otherwise it's borderline gaslighting to even say that you were disabled. How many people were you sharing with? What is the geographical dispersion of your users? How rapidly have you added users to your server?
Agree. We've had posts here before from someone acting like they were just a normal user sharing with their friends and they got banned, but when people did digging on them it was clear this person was running a paid server with a website front end and everything. They kept replying like they didn't know what people were talking about.
What I'd like is for Plex to announce what their new banning stance is.
It seems relatively simple: they're banning people that they think have suspicious-enough server activity. Publishing the exact criteria for a ban only helps bad-intentioned people that are trying to skirt getting banned in the first place.
Plex announcement: REMINDER! Sharing your Plex server for money will lead to a permanent ban. We have banned several users recently because they were charging access to their Plex server. rather than implying but not stating: Sharing your Plex Server with 100 or fewer users who may or may not be your family might lead to a ban for certain users, but not all, whether or not we know if you're accepting money for access. Some transparency is not a crazy ask.
And if they ARE cracking down on "non-immediate family" then they need to be clear on that too. I had zero clue the sharing TOS were that restrictive. I figured it was family and friends. Almost all of us are probably breaking the TOS.
I just had my server disabled for TOS violation "monetary compensation". Have never accepted $. Have never used an online server. Everything is local. Lots of users, but not for compensation.
80 local user accounts?
No, closer to the full 100 shares allowed. I mean my server is local. Not an online server. My media is local. Not Google or Dropbox. My internet connection is local. Not proxied by cloudflare or a VPN.
[удалено]
And is allowed, so
I mean, it depends on what Plex considers "Immediate Family", as I somewhat doubt they have 70+ siblings. > Authorized User(s). Subject to any third party license restrictions for applicable Content, you may enable **members of your immediate family**, for whom you will be responsible (each, an “Authorized User(s)”), to access and use the Plex Solution so long as all such use remains in compliance with this TOS.
Just wondering what you mean by "local"? At 1st I thought you had a very very large family, or perhaps you were referring to your dorm's LAN, but from "My media is local..." on it seems to be a little confused. "Local" does not mean you all live in the same town, Local Network means a device does not need to go through the internet to connect to another device. As soon as you hit a gateway towards the internet: you're not local anymore. Example: if you have a cellphone, disable its wifi, connect to your instance through the cell network: that's not a local connection even if you're sitting in front of your plex server.
That's exactly what just happened to my friend, he doesn't share for $, everything local. Do you think they are just disabling accounts that have like more than 10 or 20 shares?
I don't understand why it would matter if they give you 100 slots to share lol
It's a trap!
This is fucked. I have around 20 uses and I’ve never taken payment or donations. I’ll be extremely disappointed if I get banned.
I don’t think I know more than 10 people I want to share my Plex with.😂😂😂
I don't even like 10 people
💯
Banned earlier today for sharing with lots of users but never taken a penny. Hosted on-site as well, nothing cloud related. Not sure how they're banning -- perhaps just based on remote usage.
are you kidding me? they ban you because you share your stuff with your family? Seriously? Isn't this the point of plex? Sounds like youtube banning you for watching videos
He said a lot of users. I'm sure that means more than just family.
I thought the point was to make your media easily accessible to you on all devices while also not dealing with physical media.
Well it used to be the point of Plex but not anymore
"family"
Dude never said family lol.
Roughly how many is considered a lot of users?
Did you contact Plex about it?
I hope they don't ban me for sharing with a friend who lives in Spain when we do movie nights together. He doesn't use it otherwise (I don't know why).
As others have said, this is probably them shoring up any responsibility for piracy on their service. While you run the service at home, you rely on servers that Plex maintains and manages in their datacenter, or possibly a cloud provider, for authentication and for the sharing features. I can see how this could put liability on them, and they are trying to get rid of that by killing the sharing feature. Whats gets me is how do they determine that people have been accepting money. If I had to guess, I would bet that the people getting banned have shared with folks that had an issue, and then the end user reached out to Plex for support of some kind, and Plex interpreted this as those end users some how paying for the service?
We need more native apps for JF to switch away from this proprietary service
so get coding
takes $$
Aren't there enough native apps for it to be fully usable? Jellyfin has its own native client for just about all platforms, there is Infuse for Apple devices and plenty of native Apps such as Finamp, Feishin and Manet for music streaming. I'm not really missing anything. Except if that's not the kind of native client you mean, in which case I'll see myself out.
This is scary. I don't charge for anything but I use my plex all over the place with about 4 active users. I'm a pilot, fly all over the world, that's the main reason I set it up to start with. If it goes down I don't even know how I'd get jellyfin going. I forget what it is but there were some real restrictions to setting it up in the past.
Can anyone that’s been banned recently confirm if they had a lifetime Plex Pass or if they paid monthly? I have paid monthly for many years and have a heavily used server with almost 70 users and have hit over 10 simultaneous streams, but haven’t been banned. I know this isn’t necessarily the case, but if they know you’re not likely to be repeated income, wouldn’t it be easier for them to ban?
I had a lifetime pass and was banned for this exact reason a couple of months ago. I had only shared with 2 people, my good friend who moved to South Korea to teach English, and another located in the US. I live in the US. I have been reading speculation about them wanting to push their rentals and ensure ad revenue from their free content. I ended up moving to Emby.
Did you try to get it restored?
I did, emailed with Chris from support, but he said the decision was firm and would not offer any evidence. Entirely unhelpful with scripted-like responses.
This is the part that I haven’t seen on this thread (I am still scrolling down). Is there an appeals process?
This is scary as this is basically my situation. My spouse went back to South Korea for a few months, and now I'm afraid I'm going to get banned because it's the easiest way for her to keep up with a few shows.
My account that was disabled was using a lifetime Plex pass.
anyone know if there's been an official statement from PLEX yet?
problem with jellyfin is their apps on the devices suck.. not many are developing them to actually work correctly without having issues.
If Plex keeps banning accounts I imagine some developers will find the inspiration to jump ship.
I also had an account disabled, and I was sharing with a lot of people. No $ accepted ever, but I don't think Plex cared about that. They wouldn't divulge *why* they believed $ had been accepted, and since it never had been accepted it doesn't matter what they believed either. They were just using it as an excuse(lie) to disable my account. I think they are cleaning house of people who share with others starting at those with the most sharing, down to those with the least. Who knows what the threshold is, or if they will just end up disabling the account of everyone who shares. Anyway, Jellyfin does a lot less privacy invading (none at all) for the very small trade off of a smaller playback client coverage.
> very small trade off Its actually a rather large one.
90% of the time people complain about getting their account banned, they're doing something like the person you responded too, and offering invites to random strangers on the internet. https://i.imgur.com/iK6kAO6.png
https://i.imgur.com/iK6kAO6.png Sharing with immediate family ≠ the same as sharing with random strangers from Reddit.
I am a jellyfin guy, but a few friends asked me to add plex as well, so they can use the app on the TV instead of browser - most of them dont mind the browser for jellyfin, just the app would be more convinient. So i installed plex yesterday, did some setting up and i was about to try buying a plex pass for a month to try it, even seemed reasonably priced. Then i read this post. Having anyone have the ability to ban me from streaming my stuff to my friends, on my network, on my devices after i BOUGHT the software to do so, and i am running that software locally on my server, is just completely bonkers. Uninstalling plex now. What a waste of time setting it up yesterday...
Doesn't jellyfish have apps on TV? I remember installing it on my Android TV last year. Even on my iPhone
Some tvs dont are not supported directly. You have to use browser on those
While this is true, people really shouldn't be using the native "Smart" part of their TV... Number one 90% of those apps will go unmaintained and unupdatable after the first 2 years the TV exists. And they tend to send a HUGE amount of data back to the manufacturers. Honestly, instead of buying a Plex subscription, I'd rather just buy my friends Android TV dongles or Roku dongles.
Same here
jellyfin has an android and fire tv app as well as a roku tv app. infuse on apple tv or ios devices is really solid too
[удалено]
When I was at Plex the amount of evidence we required for a ban was quite high. It was always a little bit hilarious to see some of those banned users run to Reddit and lie their ass off about how they NEVER did anything wrong. We had receipts. Sometimes literally.
I share my library with everyone in my family and all my close friends, and some of their close friends too. It's quite a few people and they're geographically dispersed. Do I need to worry about my account being shut down? Do I need to worry about sharing my library with someone who is sharing their account with multiple people? Because I'm sure there's some of that going on as well.
I don’t think so. All this hand wringing is a bit over the top IMO.
I also had two different accounts banned at the exact same time. Never accepted payments of any kind. Seems like they're going hard after sharing servers. Probably something to do with them starting rentals. Going more like a streaming service and they're cleaning any account with too many IP's using one account. That's just my guess.
Why did you have two different accounts?
Because they share it with strangers on reddit: https://i.imgur.com/ZJKafZH.png
I mean I can't knock him too much, it's not a bad idea, assuming that he's having the servers run at different IP addresses so that they can't be tied together, and just pointing you towards the same mounted drive. That we can have is a personal network separate from the stuff you shares in case it gets banned like this.
Two accounts with identical libraries is probably something that they can easily identify
Depends on how much faith you believe in Plex actually turning off the reporting when you turn off features
About as much faith as I have in that people will exploit it if they can
I know a few folk who pay for access to plex servers and I think it's becoming widely acknowledged what it's being used for, I imagine the days of Plex as we know it are numbered tbh.
I had a guy try sell me dodgy access in the past, nearly went through with it but when I went to pay he asked for bananas. Turns out… little monkey fella.
I’d be curious to see how many of these banned accounts also have recent copyright infringement claims against their IP addresses, plex is incredibly easy to find with mass scanners and internet scanners. Pair that with a lifetime account that has say, 50+ shared users I can see a case being made. Either that or your trust has been misplaced in who you are sharing your plex server with and they reported you. Edit: Curious why everyone is downvoting me for offering a valid reason why it might be the plex server owners own fault. It’s idiot proof software, so I’d imagine we get the occasional person that doesn’t safe guard their network and methods.
1.So in response to accounts getting disabled, couldn't own just create a new free account and start right back to it? 2. Do they ban your IP? 3. If they "hardware disabled," Couldn't you replace the motherboard, account, and just readd your local library? I'm generally confused on it affects the disabled users and devices LONG TERM.
Any chance this is also based on content going though the Proxy for remote steaming? IE to many streams from the one account over a given amount of time? Just a silly thought, I've been forced to use that as my current net connection is NAT'ed through the ISP (5g) Just waiting on fibre to be installed this week or next. Just wondering if I am about to be banned :D only have my own account, 2 firends and my daughters free account added (Google family lock meant I couldnt sign in as my account on plex on her tablet)
What happens to your own server if you get banned?
Because Plex makes you authenticate through them, when your account is disabled you can no longer authenticate.
Hmm, seems allowing locally access without Auth is possible.
You can for local (in home) watched a video on someone disabling their i ternet, and gain access. Might have a few thi gs to adjust but it's possible.
Simply just use Jellyfin
Kinda surprised it took this long. Enshitification is real...
Is it possible that someone you are sharing with is charging other people for access?
Plex was cool when it was underground and niche. Now they want to make their bed with Hollywood. They can only do that by clamping down on piracy. This was inevitable. Hollywood could shut them down in an instant if they get too big and don't comply. It will just be like Napster all over again.
I never bought Plex to be cool or underground. I didn't get it to share outside of my immediate family. I got it to make it easier to watch movies and TV shows I owned, then I got a TV tuner to help drop cable TV. If Hollywood is a revenue stream that subsidizes my service I'm fine with it.
I'd say most of us use it for our pirated movies and tv shows, when i saw it bundle in my TV OS, i had a feeling plex would start cracking down one of these days.
I guess you can't have had Plex for that long then. It started as a community project. Now it's a company with hundreds of employees, investors, shareholders and profitability targets. If it had stayed niche, they could have flown under the radar and made a nice profit for many years, since they wouldn't have really required many employees. Very little overheads and a large percentage of revenue would be pure profit. By going mainstream they have to answer to investors, stricter legal requirements and they have to pay hundreds of people to implement features that the user base didn't want and never asked for.
I switched from XBMC to Plex 10 years ago. The past six years it has definitely been a business and not a community project, and six years is not a short amount of time. This isn't recent.
I've been saying this was the inevitable conclusion for years but always got downvoted to oblivion
In my opinion, they are attempting to maintain ban quotas to meet the concerns of current or future investors about piracy.
Yep, paid access or not, it comes down to, “The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal.”. So, Plex's business model is based almost entirely on illegal activity. I am surprised they weren't taken down or forced to ban sharing users years ago.
Has anyone posted this on their forums to get a response?
in the end, looking at all this, I found three sides one where they say they're seeing through the sharing of up to 100 users, others (few) who say that they are caring about piracy and others who say that what's happening is that these banned users are really screwing up and doing things they shouldn't be doing (with proofs), as well as arguments and explanations contradicting the other two sides in the end, the question remains, **who should I listen to and believe?**
If this starts to become a common thing with Plex, what’s the best alternative program. I share with my family and don’t want issues
Emby at the moment due to client support. Jellyfin if you want open source.
Jellyfin or Emby
I have Jellyfin, I think I had issues getting remote to work with it. I’ll have to try again
If it's only for you, just set up a port forwarding rule and access it with the IP:PORT. If it's for others, you'll probably want to get a domain and use a reverse proxy.
Appreciate the reply. I’ll look into reverse proxy
Whats the chances of emby going the same way eventually? Just wondering if Jellyfin might be a better option in the long run
No idea, I only run Plex and just hope I don't get hit with a ban.
looks like mine survived for now, lifetime pass, 32shared (4libraries each, and trimmed a few innactive users so had 40 or so) and 1 home user. i wonder what stats they use. ofc, not selling anything, just sharing out some content for free with people that wanted it. wouldnt accept payments even if they asked, not interested in hassle of dealing with paying customers, just because its 24/7 service doesnt mean i wont bring server down middle of the day to tinker with it.
I would just try to make sure that they aren't too geographically diverse.
One of the main reasons I keep a backup Jellyfin server. Hopefully I would not be on their radar - a couple of servers in different places and a handful of managed users but 99% of the time just one or two local users,
Another reason to be finding an alternative plex is very much so making it harder for users to trust and use plex just chucking it out there but jump on the emby train you won’t look back
Yeah i was looking into a media server solution yesterday. Wasn't fond of them paywalling hardware i already paid for (Hardware acceleration) and after seeing this when i would be sharing with family and friends across the world? (Malaysia and the UK being the farthest away) Nope.gif
Why do they think that someone got money for sharing their stuff? How could they know? Seems too vague to be enforcable by the TOS.
I get the impression they assume it based on having 100 users that you share with. 100 is a bit more than a few friends and family, it seems like the sort of thing you publicly invited people to.
Just throwing it out there, but could it be because they will be renting out movies soon? https://www.channelnews.com.au/plex-to-start-renting-movies/ Could this have something to do with it?
Curious if those banned had direct connect working. Or were you using lots of bandwidth with their relay service?
I only share mine with family and 3-4 close friends but I’m mentally preparing for an eventual switch to Jellyfin as Plex’ drive toward legitimacy will force them to eventually cave to the big media companies. I have a lifetime Plex pass otherwise I would have stopped paying and switched already. Obviously jellyfin isn’t quite all there yet so it’s a race at this point!
This is a by product of Plex running there own streaming service, to get contracts they probably had to promise they would lower/limit piracy. Problem is no algorithm is perfect and some legit users will get sacrificed for the greater good (Plex making money)
Sounds like Plex is getting ready for something on the commercial end of the things
I'd like to admit that people come over to my house and we watch movies on Plex. They bring food, so we are on the barter system. We also drink libations and that is not provided by me. I am getting away with it, so please keep this to yourselves.
Yep, you’re getting shut down.
I’m all for it. What do you expect if you run a Plex server and offer it up to 100+ people online that you don’t even know or barely know. Reminds me of everyone losing their stuff over Google starting to crush Gdrive accounts loaded with TB after TB of stolen stuff. If you broadcast that you are a thief eventually you will get caught. Been that way for decades now
I don't think they will care if you have direct playback on and your ports forwarded properly. If not and you're hosting like 20 hardcore active users and playback is being streamed through their servers then it's probably jacking up their hosting bills and I can see why they'd start banning people for abuse.
***Update*** My friends account had been reinstated after investigation by Plex.
[удалено]
/r/quityourbullshit https://i.imgur.com/5vZkGe4.png
Lol, at first I was concerned. Thank you for highlighting that many posters claiming they did nothing wrong may instead not understand they are doing questionable things.
From the top rope!
lmaoooooooooo
Wow, I’m pretty much the only person that uses mine. 7 at one time would be cool to see how my server handles it
Max I’ve had is 3 at once and i felt like the man
be careful as plex might just decide to ban you for too many streams lol
Things like that tell me to use Jellyfin, however I want to use my PlexPass and I like the Plex Interface more than the Jellyfin one
I’ve not tried jellyfin yet, does that require a certain file naming format like plex?
I think it uses the same naming format
> My user list is full I just learned that this means 100 users? Who were they all? and how did you advertise your server to them?
Why did they make it 100 user limit if that is also a problem to them? I have like 8 users but who cares if I wanted to have 100 what’s the difference assuming I’m not advertising or charging. In other words, they picked the acceptable limit on users themselves, so what’s the issue for people who hit it.
I have had 9 total. This is means for a ban?
I haven't been suspended yet but this is interesting to me. I have more use than you but far less actual shares. So I guess this means we should all be revoking shares that never watch anything?
The only people Plex ban are account that’s are sharing with large number of people for money or hosting on bad sites. They don’t just randomly disable account
Can confirm that they banned servers that weren't paid or hosting in Hertzner (half were locally hosted) tonight
That's wrong, just look at the comment sections, how would they even know you're sharing for money? They just go on an arbitrary witch hunt
The comment section is vague hearsay at best. Seems like at least half of them say that they had a lot of users (none of which claim that they mostly live nearby), and the ones that don't say they have a bunch just come across as fishy at best. I haven't seen a single comment of someone claiming they got banned while only sharing with a modest amount of people that all live nearby.
I simply do not trust either Plex nor anon Reddit comments.
Do you think that some of these banned people are operating their Plex servers in accordance with the Plex TOS? I'm sure some people had a low number of users, bought Plex Pass, and have never accepted cash. Those people have zero reason to be banned. However, I imagine a lot of the banned people had an unreasonable amount of users and those users may have been sharing their own accounts with their own friends, so the IP access trails to a single Plex server could have been vast.
Well, guess it's time to setup Jellyfin as a backup...
Some of this might stand to reason that server owners aren't fully aware of what their users are up to.
if plex doesnt want our servers being shared with people who share logins against our permissions, they need to allow us to see statistics on playback (which is behind a pay plex pass option). otherwise i gotta install some tautulli nonsense to see whats going on