Fakku, an English-language hentai platform, joined the fight against Covid-19 with an announcement that all of its porn will be free for the next two weeks.
Within hours of that announcement, however, the site crashed—possibly due to an overwhelming swarm of homebound hentai enthusiasts overloading its servers and attempting to download the free content while they could.
Videos by VICE
“As the world continues to practice social distancing to fight the spread of COVID-19, we must come together and stay inside,” the Fakku Twitter account posted late Sunday night. “Starting RIGHT NOW, all subscription hentai is free for the next two weeks on FAKKU.”
Clicking through to the site this morning, however, shows this error page:
While we can’t pinpoint when, exactly, Fakku succumbed to the server load, the site was down for at least two hours, according to users on a data hoarding subreddit who complained that the site was returning errors while they tried to archive the free content.
As of writing, the site is still mostly down, but some frames are half-loading as it attempts to un-crush itself.
Fakku launched in 2006 and has more than nine million unique visitors every month, according to its own statistics. The Twitter account has more than 256,000 followers.
Porn sites everywhere are jumping on the viral coronavirus marketing bandwagon: Pornhub’s offering free Premium content, xHamster and Stripchat are giving out free sessions with cam models, and OnlyFans posted advice for people struggling to make money when sales or day jobs are cut back due to the pandemic.