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
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I don't count this as fake. He most certainly uses the software and the features he described are actually features under plex pass. And I no doubt believe he enjoys it. No lies here. My experience with plex pass is the same lol.
I think the point being made is that company staff shouldn't be leaving five-star reviews on products they, themselves, work on. Whether they do it because they love the product, or a company suit told them to. Personally, I think it's fine to try and convince people to use your/your company's software, but giving yourself a five-star review to do so is downright pathetic.
Mostly without being transparent, and stating they work for the company.
I'm fully okay with them doing so, but they have to disclose what they're doing so. Like the fact that the review didn't disclose that they were an employee is very sketchy to me.
They seriously enshitified the download feature. You used to be able to set it to download X number of unplayed episodes. Then it would manage downloading fresh content for you as you watched stuff. Now you have to manually download each and every episode yourself. This was literally the killer feature Plex had over Jellyfin for me.
I think they're getting pressure re the pirating aspect. I could imagine the bigger they get the bigger the magnifying glass will be held up to them. They're probably doing some fancy footwork to be able to remain in production / avoid lawsuits and similar pressure.
Sure, that's why they keep adding features people don't want. But gimping one of their key paid features makes no sense to me.
I would imagine its harder to argue you don't condone your users using it for piracy when you have a feature that automatically does stuff very closely related to piracy. I'm not going to get into an argument over whether it's defensible legally or not, but it makes sense to me that they play it safe in general.
Oh, ffs, really? That's kind of the reason for a download feature.
Pricks.
Yeah fair enough, and I do agree. I only reused the title of the forum post where this was originally posted. Have changed the title up now.
I do think he should’ve been a little forthcoming in his review, however
If he was forthcoming in his review, it would have been to obvious that it's a breach of the ToS. Workers are not permitted to review apps made by their own company.
This is 100% a shady review.
Did not know that. Yeah bad practice then