> In mid-March, odd stories began to trickle onto social media that people who ran forums as benign as caring for hamsters or hosting cycling club groups had to shut up shop because they found it too time-consuming and laborious to comply with Ofcom’s regulations.
> The net effect of what we have witnessed so far (it’s very early days) is that independent forums and sites will be crippled, forcing users onto Big Tech platforms where Ofcom can rely on their in-house censorship mechanisms. Ofcom seems primarily interested in destroying what remains of the “free” internet, and if that happens to include forums about hamsters or dissident social media sites, then so be it.