In this case, you are making work for a person that doesn't monetize the platform you're using. It was service that was offered in good faith, and is now, because of this useless request, not going to be available.

Instead they are being forwarded to a service that does monetize their service.

>now, because of this useless request

No, it is because of an overreaction to a request. If they are acting in good faith then just reply

Maybe the request is an overreaction?

How many hours should this person put in to respond to the request?

About 3 minutes.

"Here's the privacy policy. Here's the data export page."

Haha data export page, what even is that? Let me just go to my SQL DB, redis, glacier backups, and Kafka logs and just click the data export button. It will only take 3 minutes.

There's a button to download the user's data on their profile page. You can direct them to that. There's also a function to anonimise a user, which scrubs records of IP addresses and usernames.

What's Disqus got to do with it? The fact you are bringing it up does you've no interest in the facts of this case. This is about a forum, which uses Discourse, which has these features. This is totally relevant.

Discourse, disqus good job nit picking.

Perhaps this person could spend time learning programming in his free time, implement the 'scripts or programs', read 500 pages of law, go back and time and write down every time any amount of data is used, etc etc etc.

While you are at it, you could take the bar exam to become a lawyer in your free time to avoid legal fees, to continue to run the forum as a volunteer.

And all because europe can't pay software devs so all the talent leaves so they need selective enforcement to make local companies competitive! Trump would approve of such trade barriers.

"Can I have all my data that you hold?" isn't something that has been introduced with GDPR. It was introduced with DPA over 20 years ago. That was backed by £500,000 fines.

THe sky didn't fall.

And to all the others.

Closing down a forum because of a single request is a ridiculous over reaction.

OP could have waited for the regulator's letter before doing anything.

When you receive a request that is titled the "Nightmare letter" [1] it is hard to assume otherwise.

1: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nightmare-letter-subject-acce...

> exercise their rights

These aren't their natural right. Some laws are just bad independent of whether most people support or agreed to them. This is most obvious in dictatorships, but dysfunction strikes all systems.