It doesn't do anything more for you than to stream your own media

Sure it does, which is why we're not all using VLC to stream our media.

Furthermore, they do provide a simple way to share our media with friends and family via their authentication servers along with their relay servers if direct access to your server goes down for whatever reason which have associated costs. I have a lot of my own gripes about Plex, but this particular change is probably at the bottom of the list, and I think acting like this software has zero value is disparaging not only Plex but Jellyfin and the army of volunteers over there working hard to make their product better for you and everyone else at no cost. You're essentially saying all their work is worthless since their product accomplishes all the same things as Plex.

How have they doubled their prices? The monthly fee and lifetime license are still the same price and they've always charged for Android and iOS playback if you didn't have the Plex Pass. I won't argue that this change is a good thing but I don't think it's anywhere near as big of a deal as people are making it out to be. They aren't changing anyone now who streams from a server that has the Plex Pass so now my users can watch on their mobile devices for free using a license I paid for once close to a decade ago.

HDD manufacturers have been increasing their prices as of late for the same products that were previously cheaper, and Mullvad is still charging you the same monthly fee even though they've removed important features like port forwarding, so what's the difference? Hosting a server has costs associated with it and this is another one of those costs if you want to use their completely optional solution to use and share your library.