Because of the nature of federation posts and comments on LemmyNSFW communities will live on basically forever. However the photos and videos will likely be lost. Some were links to external media and will stick around, some may be cached. But most photos and videos that were uploaded directly to the instance will break when the server fully goes down.
For example: [NSFW, OBVIOUSLY] !boobs@lemmynsfw.com - that link should load fine on your instance. It should look functional just with no new posts. (Note: it’s actually possible to post and comment in these communities still, but only people in your instance will see it)
The images are served from links like these: (mild NSFW) https://lemmynsfw.com/pictrs/image/d50379d3-7d64-440c-bcf6-13dbf2b81c1b.webp?format=webp
The fact that the images still load is a somewhat hopeful sign. The server is still running, Lemmy just crashed. There’s still time for the head admin to come back, the data still exists. This seems unlikely though as the other admin says they haven’t heard from them since October.
So there’s a small window to archive this stuff, if you’re interested. Between now and whenever the media server crashes or gets shut off for non-payment.
Porn angle notwithstanding, if nothing else, this should be taken as a sign of the fragility of the Fediverse, and a warning that server communities which are only administrated by a single person (who could get hit by a bus at any time) can disappear in an instance. In order to make the Fediverse more robust against stuff like this, we really need servers and communities to have at least 2 admins with the necessary level of access for handling unforeseen circumstances. A single person going MIA randomly shouldn’t be enough to take down an entire Fediverse instance. (I saw something similar happen with kbin, when one day the site just… went down!)
Now when it comes to the porn side of this, this is also kind of bad news for Fediverse adoption since there are a lot of sex/porn/kind-related communities on Reddit, and now we are kind of without a lot of that stuff.
I waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaant to cryyyyy. sad, sad, sad, sad, sad. no words to describe this instance! The world is done, finished, end, caput!
Oh yea, I actually considered trying to run a replacement for a time, I’m still running the stack I setup for it but I decided to stop pursuing ‘productizing’ it and moved on. That stack just became my over-engineered personal instances - https://bestiver.se/
I setup a stack of Lemmy+Mastodon+Linkstack on subdomains, with the intention of selling accounts to people who would benefit from fully controlling their own social media presence…including adult creators. Afterall, they can’t get kicked off of something catering to them. I even setup a shortlink thing like: https://bestiver.se/@patrick
I still have the domain “xxxiver.se”
If you’re wondering why there aren’t other instances catering to that, it’s because hosting that content is expensive (lots of images/video content), time consuming (tons of mod reports), legally problematic (you better respond to mod reports/police inquiries quickly), and there is no simple way to accept payments since everything kicks you off if they know it’s porn related.
I think your other big problem would’ve been that attempting to “productize” it (beyond asking for donations to help with costs), would immediately make everybody else on the fediverse hate you.
My plan was actually to sell accounts to creators for a relatively small fee, and either not sign up free users at all or set up a separate service for free accounts. For the porn one it’d be asking the creators to pay a small fee so they could own their own distribution. Other people could obviously see the content, and creators could interact with lemmynsfw and anywhere else. But by selling accounts it would give them a space where they could interact with the fediverse and know that they are hosted on a thing that is actually paid for without advertising. They can’t get kicked off if they’re the intended users.
It’d also be a way to get funding into paying someone (me) to work on fixing the issues they had in the various fediverse services. That’s how things get built, and bugs get fixed. I care about improving the fediverse and was pursuing a path to get some more funding for it.
Not everything has to be provided for free for it to be a good thing.
I do miss the amateur content, ngl - people often say to just go to porn sites, and I get it, but there is a reason tumblr, reddit, etc etc always develop a nsfw underbelly and if the fediverse could crack that nut (heh) it would be great imho; although, the more I think about it, OF has killed off the vast majority of ppl just doing it for fun.
As someone who’s done it for fun and dated people who’ve done it for money. Yeah I stick to amateurs for a reason. It’s great to pay sex workers, but amateurs have a certain vibe. It’s one where I know you’re having fun because that’s the only reason you’re doing this
OF has killed off the vast majority of ppl just doing it for fun.
With Instragram as the “creator front page.” Patreon too, on the digital art side.
It’s so weird how OF gets to pretend it isn’t a porn site, and somehow get along with banks that would normally turn their nose up to a literal porn site.
…get along with banks that would normally turn their nose up to a literal porn site…
Ohhhh, banks and big corporations have quietly had their fingers in Adult Entertainment for decades.
One of my favorite gay porn actors - who was also a phenomenally proportioned model, which was how I first discovered him - gave many interviews while he was in the business and he often stated that the public would be surprised by who the backers and investors in a lot of the studios and sites really were. Big business and finance.
It is weird, completely agree, and I think finding that loophole is how they won (obv they were not the fist site promoting cam girls)
My conspiracy theory is they have so much dirt on the finance world that it gives them leverage.
What if there were to be a “data breach” of what they’ve been subscribe too…
Really sucks. It’s hard to find a place other than here or Reddit that doesn’t require a payment or ID verification to post amateur media
I’m not archiving porn dude. There’s plenty more out there. It’ll be ok.
Oh it’s not my thing. But some people are archivists
I still have hundreds of communities from lemmynsfw in my blocklist from before instance based blocking was implemented. Pretty sure lemmynsfw is 95% responsible for that feature needing to be implemented.
Wouldn’t the NSFW filter (which is enabled by default) take care of that?
lemmy.ml blocking lemmynsfw by default has been one of the nicer parts about using this server
I have heard the best part of being on lemmynsfw was that .ml blocked them.
not so much of a loss if that was the best part about it lmao
Yeah, I’m all for a place like that existing, but it really doesn’t need to exist in my timeline, which I might scroll while I’m on the bus or such…
