Like many users, I was thoroughly burned by the Eclipse rollout in 2020, and told several people that I would switch to the first viable alternative without a second thought. Unfortunately, the would-be competitors, ArtRise and ArtSpacious, are at this point presumed dead in the water—the former due to a breakdown in chain of command and atrocious public relations, the latter due to similar tardy correspondence.

Along came an underdog named Buzzly.art: essentially a fork of ArtRise by the remaining capable dev, it boasted the "Old dA" style, and most importantly, had a working proof-of-concept. The site went gold last October; having hyped it to colleagues beforehand, I was one of the first through the door. Satisfied with the layout despite early bugs, and impressed by what at the time appeared to be the staff transparency long missing from dA, I encouraged several friends to join and was all but ready to endorse it publicly... but that I wasn't satisfied on the privacy defaults for new accounts. Several weeks of maintenance tickets later, new bees were sufficiently anonymized that I felt I could shill in good faith.

But fate, apparently, had dragged this out for a reason.

Even before Buzzly went gold, there was friction behind the scenes over the site's acceptance of mature content, with the Upload Guidelines revised multiple times mere days after the public launch. The first major retraction, a ban on "feral" erotica, provoked vicious flame wars that culminated in a site administrator abetting the bullying of a former user to the brink of suicide. Not having a horse in the NSFW race, the unfolding drama flew largely under my radar until it boiled over into a dA fan group at the very moment I was sitting down to write my recruitment pitch.

I have written extensively on the steady deterioration of Buzzly.art's management since. In retrospect, the links to ArtRise should have been a warning, as Staff deleted its original dA Group to purge mounting criticism and the Discord server degenerated into a vitriolic echo chamber. Cautious optimism gave way to grim resignation as moderator vigilanteism continued to run rampant and site policy became a steady parade of arbitrary rollbacks. Comments would be deleted and users banned without warning or explanation. Early this month, I found myself in the line of fire, having been issued a formal strike for alleged violation of the terms of service—and yet I was not even provided evidence of the purported crime.

It is now two weeks since I filed a challenge through Buzzly.art's official contact page, and one week since I made a direct appeal to the site runner. As of this writing, I have not received a reply from either; according to correspondence by other users, I am not the first to be outright ignored on official channels. This is utterly unacceptable business practice. I had hoped I might delay formal denunciation until after I had completed an open letter to site staff, but such gross incompetence is my red line.

As of this writing, registrations remain closed, but suffice to say, stay off Buzzly.art. Word through the grapevine is Staff will be terminating the Discord server under the same guise that they killed the Group.

To those I had persuaded to join, I offer my apologies.