

I had exactly the same experience, at about the same time. Had been hearing good things about Plex so decided to try it out. Immediately noped out when it required me to create an account with them. Similar to you I looked around and found it to be a relatively new change.
Frankly baffling to me that anyone with the wherewithal to self-host was okay with it.
Jellyfin has some security issues that, depending on who you ask, are either critical vulnerabilities that make it completely unsafe to expose to the Internet or largely unconcerning for regular users.