It’s true that manipulation of information has been the practice of the powerful for a long time, but I don’t think it’s accurate to say that the degree or scale to which it’s been possible to do has remained the same. As an analogy, consider that both knives and nuclear bombs have the ability to kill people while having quite different implications, particularly with regard to the health and flourishing of our species.

Obviously AI isn’t all bad. It’s not even “bad”. It just is. But the blast radius of a Bad Decision by a Bad Actor is much wider if armed with these new tools.

I’m a subscriber and received no such notification. This is the first I’m hearing of it.

For those looking for alternatives, I would only suggest Plex if you’re OK with hitching your wagon to a different company with interests possibly competing with your own. Its great software and easy to set up but they can remove features you like and use at any time. It may be a risk worth taking for you but go into it with eyes open. I dropped them when they removed photo sync and started getting more aggressive about their content offerings.

Jellyfin is my current home and I like it a lot but I recognize that not everyone wants to deal with the setup and troubleshooting.

For some middle ground, there’s also Emby which is a commercial version of Jellyfin.