Cubicle 7, makers of role-playing games including The One Ring, announced they cannot handle the liability of operating a forum under the General Data Protection Regulation, Europe's infamous GDPR. This law, which goes into effect May 25, is causing a massive uproar among Website owners. Among other things it requires Website operators to declare:
- What personally identifying information they collect
- What they do with that data
- How long they keep the data
- And how you can request that data or have it deleted
Web forum software wasn't designed to accommodate these requirements. Worse, on a forum with tens of thousands of members the management of data requests could easily spiral out of control.
We have not yet decided what SF-Fandom's GDPR policy will be, but I expect to see other Web forums shut down in the coming weeks and months. I don't have any idea of how widespread that will be.