Several years ago I was looking to set up a media server and initially grabbed Plex because I’d heard so much good about it at the time. The moment it asked me to create an account with Plex during setup and I discovered this wasn’t optional I immediately uninstalled it.

I remain baffled that anyone was okay with needing an externally managed account in order to use software running entirely on their own hardware, let alone the litany of additional enshittification that has happened since.

I will almost always choose .NET as my development platform when greenfielding a project for exactly this reason. It’s an incredibly robust standard library that virtually guarantees I won’t need to pull in a litany of additional utility libraries, and I can also expect that what libraries I do choose to bring in are highly unlikely to drag along a ridiculous parade of dependencies.