There should be a law about what "delete" means for online services. I used to delete old comments on reddit until their AI caught up to my behavior and shadow-banned my 17 year-old account. As soon as that happened, I could see every comment I ever deleted in my history again. The only consolation is that no one but me could see my history anymore.

As long as you are in the eu GDPR gives you the right to be forgotten.

Or CCPA in California

They're both paper tigers. The CLOUD Act and that massive data center in Utah trump* each of them respectively. What happens in the US stays in the US, delete button or not.

* Deliberately ambiguous.

This kind of conspiracy theory comes up a lot on here. Most of these products have the option to allow or deny that and contrary to the opinions here those policies are then followed. This whole episode is news because it violates that.

the only "conspiracy" here is acting like ignoring privacy laws and toggles is not the default for these corporation and has been for over a decade.