So why would artists who have thousands of followers abandon ship and swim to a place that probably thinks of them as perverted fascists anyway?

Not seeing the incentive here.

You get the cryo grenades, I'll get the liquid nitrogen sprayer, we might just be able to slow the cosmic horror down.

If they consented to being devoured and digested, then yes.

And at the moment nothing is banned, the new rules go into effect in Mid October

It's gotten worse than that, with people using unrelated tags for their art. When someone types in vore it shouldn't show a furry orgy, but because people put every tag under the sun on their art, it's always in the results.

I do on occasion, the tagging system and multi image upload are good features, but it's not really a place for social interaction anymore.
The NSFW side of the site is now 95% furry porn as people don't tag their things properly.