Comment by aimazon
4 months ago
The forum has had less than 100k posts in the last 10 years.
Forums and small websites have been killed off by changing consumer behaviour, the shift to big social media platforms. Using big numbers to suggest that the UK Online Safety Act is responsible for killing off these smaller independent websites is disingenuous.
If you do the same exercise for the other forums, you’ll find they’re all long dead too.
I posted another example in this thread of someone running forums with 275k monthly active users that also decided to shut down. That does not qualify as "long dead".
That's just one other example. I can assure you that it is not just long-dead forums deciding to shut down, despite your preconceived notion.
You’re falling for the big numbers that do not stand up to scrutiny. There’s no such forum shutting down. Are you referring to lfgss? First, it’s not shutting down, second, the user numbers are completely wrong. As is the claim that the platform supports over 300 forums. You’re an order of magnitude off. Go and visit it and look at the activity, it’s clinging to life. 275k active users? Pure fiction.
I'll avoid searching for other examples, as you seem to want to latch onto the example itself rather than the broader message the examples communicate. The fact is that some people are shutting down operations of websites, deleting data, etc. in response to this law.
Just considering that the law is forcing people to think about shutting down operations is a sign that the law is having a chilling effect. Both for existing websites and the potential creation of new ones.
Just because you believe yourself to be the sole arbiter of which websites are valuable and which can be deleted without worry doesn't change the fact that this law is having a negative effect on small websites.
Perhaps with better communication about the law, rather than the hundreds on hundreds of pages of vague guidance, the law could remain as-is and small website operators wouldn't be as concerned. However, that is not the case.
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