It’s always a question of money. It costs money to make quality content. YouTube has content because they share ad revenue to their content providers. That expands the more popular the content is because there are more ads displayed. That revenue lets the creators expand their capabilities with better gear and stage sets. Federated networks usually depend initially on volunteers and alternative ways of earning revenue for those instances besides ads.
Historically, that’s how they usually rolled out features requiring a Plexpass - It usually depended on the server owner owning Plexpass. This move, however, makes me think they’ll probably change that for shared to others via E-mail.
Mmmmmaybe.
A lot of what they paywall depends on if the server runner’s account is a Plexpass holder. You might have to pay a one time fee for the app depending on what platform you choose.
Then again, there’s different ways of sharing your server, they might be keen on only including Plexpass for the Plex Home users and then paywall the E-mail shared users.
I also bought a lifetime VPN via StackSocial, and it ended up limiting the VPN to a browser extension. That VPN was IPinator, and it was a helluva time getting that refund because nowhere in the sale did it state the VPN service was only for web browsing. StackSocial and IPinator both pointed fingers at each other as responsible for the refund. Once I posted out to StackSocial that the “satisfaction guarantee” was also posted on their website, it was hard for them to back out and they eventually refunded me the money.
I deleted my bookmark to StackSocial and have never bought from them again.