For those who don’t know the original reason LemmyNSFW went down:
Xaeg/Yay was the owner of LemmyNSFW, and he had access to and paid for the domain, server, and everything else related to the site. He had been AWOL for about 6 months, and suddenly in mid February of 2026, the server and the domain stopped being paid for. I had no access to the server to get the database.
Because of this, it appeared LemmyNSFW as it was, and all the content on it, had died.
So I created FediNSFW.app to be the replacement! It is a piefed instance instead of a lemmy one because if there’s one thing NSFW content benefits from it’s good moderation tools and flairs, and piefed has those things.
now, back to the new update:
How is LemmyNSFW online now?
Xaeg finally responded! he gave me access to a backup of the site and ownership of the domain!
What does this change?
tldr: LemmyNSFW is now an archive, FediNSFW.app is the new fully running instance
Fedinsfw.app will continue to run as a normal piefed instance, and lemmynsfw will be an archive for the foreseeable future. It is just too much work and cost to manage two instances and all their storage and cost right now. Additionally piefed’s advanced moderation and community options are just a much better fit for a NSFW instance like this.
Hopefully this solution feels like “the best of both worlds” so to speak: This way you can view the posts you’ve made and even crosspost old posts to fedinsfw.app if you’d like, while also benefiting from the awesome piefed features.
Edit: Holy moly, something in lemmy is running wild and eating up a ton of resources, until I diagnose it, lemmynsfw will be down
Edit 2: ok, I think it’s good now, emphasis on THINK, the status of lemmynsfw may be subject to change
Imagine running the largest NSFW instance on Lemmy and not having a friend or family member know about it, and have access to maintain it in case something happens to you.
But how does one explain to their family and friends that they are admin to a NSFW instance and should something happen to them what to do with the porn instance and what priority level it is.
Yeah, they’d be like “oh haha, is the the computer where you keep your porn”, and the response would be “no, this is the computer where I keep everyone’s porn”
“Honey, you know how strongly I feel about the Fediverse and corporate free social media and FOSS, that’s the reason I have created the largest porn instance in the entire world. Not because I want to jork to it or watch it before you get home, but because of my strong values and beliefs in the Fediverse and open source software. I love you for understanding”
Actually, that’s why I created Lemmy NSFW :) There was no pornographic content at all; I had just joined from Reddit in 2023, I was quite enthusiastic, and that’s how it was created.
Then I learned that you needed to be sufficiently engaged to moderate a porn site, and that was the beginning of my decline.
I’m curious how many people IRL you told about your instance?
It’s a shame when you think about it, hard to put on a resume in such a way that captures the true scope of it.