GDPR and the upcoming online safety bill and the EU's digital economy regulations makes it nearly impossible for almost anyone to run a forum. That is now only possible by big tech.
GDPR is not just "not exploiting their personal data for commercial gain" but a lot of busy work with massive fines if you make any mistakes. How is most community forums going to work with that?
Contrary to all the BS the tech lobby says, you don't even have to have a cookie banner today I'd you don't collect datat beyond what is technically needed.
You do have to avoid leaking, though; it's effectively a requirement to do information security.
OK, slightly flippant might take half an afternoon of training for all staff.
Labour and the Tories are trying to extend The online safety bill to put forum owner in prison if found to be causing harm (whatever that means) and you would have to pay for staff to monitor the forums 24/7 (no one is going to help out if they risk going to prison). All with a fuck ton of vagueness that can millions of pounds of fines.
That will make it impossible for anyone but big tech to run online forums.
You are not wrong though that running forums or any website with user generated content is becoming increasingly difficult for individuals, though the real culprits here on EU level are the recent copyright reform which requires you to remove infringing content quickly and the upcoming Anti-Terror regulation which requires removing content in one hour. Though it might be true, that many of these laws might be toothless against individuals or non-profits, even though they do not specially exclude them. But it really seems lawmakers don't think much of the internet beyond facebook, twitter and google.
Don’t you basically just need to stop collecting any data that is not put up there by the user itself? At least with regards to gdpr.
I am in the process of starting a forum so I am quite curious to know if I am wrong in this?
But I like your sentiment.