this post was submitted on 23 May 2024
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Does anybody have the impression that Stremio may be a honeypot of some sort?

Thay are allegedly a legal service where some nefarious actors provide torrenting plugins etc. I tried to find out how they were financed, and found northing but a site purportedly selling "Web3" advertising, and filled with technobabble nonsense. No address, no way to purchase their services no GDPR notice or anything...

All I can find regarding their safety are "It's legit, nothing has happened to me so far" comments in reddit and other boards.

They have your email, they host the service, they can track all you do...

Seems kind of fishy.

Ive tried it, ironically, to watch stuff that I pay for, I have Netflix, prime video, Disney... But Stremio gives me much higher resolutions.

Even though I live in a country where sailing the high seas is not persecuted, as long as you are the end-user and you derive no profit, I'm going to delete my account (made with an email address I have for bullshit stuff ), make a new one with a truly disposable email and get a VPN.

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[–] Hugh_Jeggs@lemm.ee 67 points 5 months ago (4 children)

I stopped using it because I figured if everyone did this and stopped sharing torrents, neither would work

It's kinda selfish

[–] Sims@lemmy.ml 12 points 5 months ago (5 children)

I read a comment somewhere that Stremio uploads like a normal client. Just a comment oc, but it should be easy to check for a network savvy reader. It may be that the plugin does it, dunno.

[–] Sethayy@sh.itjust.works 8 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Pretty sure I remember that too, but believe there was some caveat like it only uploads when watching, making made it 'more give less take' on average

[–] UntitledQuitting@reddthat.com 8 points 5 months ago

Still better than leeches IMO

[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 4 points 5 months ago

I have a network monitor on my Shield TV all the time and I remember when I first tried it with Torrentio I could see my upload monitor having activity.

[–] NeuronautML@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 months ago

It does when you're watching. I have sys monitor widgets with rainmeter on my PC and whenever I'm watching something, it cpu is at least 5 or so degrees hotter and there's 5 mb + network activity on the upload. You can check yourself on system monitor.

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[–] can@sh.itjust.works 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I felt bad leaching too but another addon fixed that

[–] Evkob@lemmy.ca 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Which addon is that, if you don't mind sharing?

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

I'll message you. Also, subscription but very reasonably priced.

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[–] UntitledQuitting@reddthat.com 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Can I also be a party to the add-on you’re referencing?

[–] Evkob@lemmy.ca 15 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

They're talking about Real Debrid, which is a subscription service allowing access to hosters and easy conversion of torrents to direct streams. It's really cheap and absolutely worth the money IMO, but RD doesn't seed torrents. Distributing content in that manner would get them in heaps of legal trouble.

I guess it does somewhat solve the problem of leeching, as if anyone has streamed a torrent via RD in the past 30 days you'll just load their cached copy, but I was perhaps naïvely hoping for an actual addon (RD is not an addon but rather can be configured through Torrentio) that somehow seeded torrents I stream.

[–] can@sh.itjust.works 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

was perhaps naïvely hoping for an actual addon

Sorry for misleading.

[–] i_love_FFT@lemmy.ml 5 points 5 months ago

I would love to self host a real debrid service where i can control what i pre-download using the "my library" feature, something similar to the *arr suite but only using the stremio interface.

[–] Evkob@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 months ago

Not at all, I just misread your comment!

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[–] Tregetour@lemdro.id 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The LARPers on c/Piracy are finally taking a break from shouting 'high seas' and discovering the tragedy of the commons!

[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 2 points 5 months ago

I started using it since I filled up my NAS and couldn't keep hoarding stuff for my arr stack and Plex.

To be fair I always seed at least at a 2 ratio, and when I use Stremio (or Kodi) I use them through a Real Debrid account.

[–] deezbutts@lemm.ee 36 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It's legit, nothing has happened to me so far

[–] BurningTurtle@lemmy.burningturtle.win 35 points 5 months ago (1 children)
[–] Ilandar@aussie.zone 18 points 5 months ago (1 children)

It released in 2015. Many of us have been using it since the beginning without issue.

[–] TachyonTele@lemm.ee 21 points 5 months ago (2 children)

But what if they have a ten year plan?

[–] jjlinux@lemmy.ml 8 points 5 months ago

I guess we'll find out next year 🤔

[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 6 points 5 months ago

I'd go back to Kodi I guess, or any app that supports my Real Debrid account, so far Stremio is the fastest solution.

[–] Ilandar@aussie.zone 28 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

You don't need to make an account. There is a guest login option.

The shadiest thing I am aware of them doing was the time they added a crypto miner and asked users to choose between that or ads.

[–] Sharp312@lemmy.one 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

For me, the guest login option only appeared on first boot. When i came back to it the next day it was gone and i had to use a fake email to signup :/

[–] Ilandar@aussie.zone 3 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Which version of the application were you using? And where did you download it from? I haven't encountered this on the Samsung TV version or the APK from the Stremio website.

[–] Sharp312@lemmy.one 3 points 5 months ago

I am using the Stremio flatpak for linux. A friend of mine uses the windows version and he says he also experienced the same.

[–] Templa@beehaw.org 27 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Stremio is a parasite. They are "legal" because the app itself doesn't contain anything illegal, you have to add the plugins on the side. It is just awful because it just leeches from torrents and don't seed anything.

We're just self hosting our stuff and using Jellyseer, it's convenient and we can just forget stuff seeding as long as we can

[–] Garry@lemmy.dbzer0.com 10 points 5 months ago (5 children)

Shouldn’t the complaint be about real debrid then? People just want convenience, buying a bunch of hard drives setting up jellyfin getting a vpn waiting for things to download when you want to watch something is annoying. Paying 35 dollars for a year of hassle free easy to setup high quality streaming is an amazing deal to most.

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[–] Imprint9816@lemmy.dbzer0.com 26 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Something can be shady and not a honeypot. It's much more common. Its like people forgot this and now anytime anyone feels something is sus this type of post appears.

Unlikely.

Seems like a lot of effort when torrent trackers already provide plenty of low hanging fruit.

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)
[–] unknowing8343@discuss.tchncs.de 40 points 5 months ago

If you are not hosting, it having a repo on Github makes no difference. The server you are connecting to might have a different service running and you cannot know.

[–] elucubra@sopuli.xyz 12 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (3 children)

Is every open source app audited? Look at the XZ near disaster. And XZ is pretty critical software. Open source doesn't mean it's safe by default, it means that the code can be read.

[–] jnk@sh.itjust.works 34 points 5 months ago

The XZ topic was way more complicated than that and overly exaggerated by some people. Open source is still the closest thing we have to "safe by default".

Still, as someone else stated, if you're not hosting it's not truly open source as you can't really verify the actual code running behind the server.

[–] RobotToaster@mander.xyz 30 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

IMO the XZ thing shows the strength of open source, some turbo pedant found the backdoor within about an hour of it being released because a program took 0.3 seconds longer to start. That wouldn't be possible in a closed source app that can't be debugged properly.

[–] rufus@discuss.tchncs.de 13 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

Yeah, but usually with open-source software you get like 150 Github comments complaining and outlining their shady business practices... If there's something to complain about.

The XZ disaster is an example for sth else. There are probably more backdoors in proprietary software that we just don't know about. And they can just keep it hidden away and force the manufacturers to do so. No elaborate social engineering like in the XZ case needed... And no software is safe. They all have bugs and most of them depend on third-party libraries. That has nothing to do with being open or closed source. If so, being open provides you with more of a chance to catch mischievous behaviour. At least generally speaking. There will be exceptions to this rule.

[–] downhomechunk@midwest.social 10 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I use it with real debrid and a vpn. I have it on a few android TV devices. I need the ease of use for my luddite wife and 5 year old.

I never considered the re-seeding issue until now. Do the debrid servers not re-seed?

I'm working on a homelab and will eventually try to set up jellyfin, but this is a work in progress.

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[–] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (2 children)

I'm always incredibly skeptical of these super easy "all in one" solutions. Would rather do the work myself just to make sure.

[–] kratoz29@lemm.ee 7 points 5 months ago

I did the work first, then filled up my disks and moved to Stremio, no regrets, and yeah both solutions offer a better experience than Netflix, Prime Video, MAX, Disney+ and Star+ (which are the platforms I am have/once had.

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[–] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'm not sure if it's a honeypot, but I am sure it's never worked well for me and just caused more headaches.

[–] kariboka@bolha.forum 2 points 5 months ago
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