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] [email protected] - 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.
Adult conversation equals not NSFW.
However I do agree that the available filtering is quite lacking. Tons of topics fall under NSFW, and disabling the filter brings the usual Russian Roulette of “will it be a titty or a beheaded guy or a 60yo bloke getting fisted?”.
I’ve actually brought this up before, the Fediverse in general needs more granular NSFW sub-categories. Like, I have (or now with lemmynsfw being down, I guess, I had) a separate account for porn only. I’ve disabled NSFW filtering, but that doesn’t mean I wanna see gore, rape, murder, animals being gutted, gruesome accident photos, cartel and ISIS execution videos and so on, I just don’t want titties blurred in my main feed.