Shutting Down Forum (GDPR)

When a new law is enacted, it's not prudent analysis to assume anything about how it will be enforced based on the previous law, especially not when fines were increased 25x - GDPR is not a minor clarification of a few bits and pieces, it's a whole new thing. The previous law was specifically criticised for having no teeth, and the new law has specifically been highlighted for it's new teeth. Of course it's possible that regulators will just sit on their hands, it's just not very likely.

The only reasonable assumption is that those new teeth will be tried out, and whoever they will be tried out on first will have a bad time. Do not assume that the first cases will be Google and Facebook, the regulators aren't stupid enough to try their luck first on the two organisations that has spend the most on being technically compliant, and has bottomless warchests to fight it.

Boohoo daddy state, this big bad privately run service of which I voluntarily registered is storing my data, please go beat him

No it applies to any organization offering data services/web sites to EU residents, including authorities.

GDPR is only a regulation stating more explicitly what you're required (and were always required) to do for compliance with EU privacy laws. It obviously was needed since privacy violation has become so blatant. The GDPR legislation has been a long time in the making. It might be the case that privacy in Europe is being valued more than elsewhere in the world, I don't really know, but it's nothing new at all. For example, in Switzerland (not in EU but certainly with humanist and very old democratic and civil rights traditions) privacy in the form of banking secrecy is held in even higher esteem.

Yes, as a collateral effect, some business models might not work in EU any longer, or not to the extent they used to (though ads and affiliation links had been on a race to the bottom anyway). But I'd say that's a win, or can be turned into a net benefit. Think about what the Web has become in the last 10-15 years. We still don't have reasonable micropayments, and nobody wants paywalls anyway, etc. The result has been the rise of "platforms" and monopolies where the user's data and attention is the product, with publishers of quality, nuanced content struggling or going out of business. While you of course don't owe dead-tree publishers anything, an economic model for content creation working for more people than it is now is still very much desired.

If you're perceiving GDPR as trading barrier (even though it's just a privacy law), please also consider the US's total and utter failure to get their antitrust regulations in gear: Facebook buying WhatsApp, Google buying DoubleClick and YouTube, etc. At a certain point, others will have to react to that kind of government-sanctioned monopolization to protect their markets.

Wouldn't deleting the account pretty much take care of that?

How is it an overreaction?

If he doesn't want to waste his time because of EU snowflakes it is his prerogative to shut down his forum. Why do you believe you have a right to his service?