Is anything ever truly “deleted” or just presented to users as such? I imagine once an image has been synced to the cloud, it’s stored somewhere forever, for reasons you hinted at.

I work for a large internet/tech company, and all images uploaded by users must be permanently retained somewhere per our legal policies, even if that means sending it to long-term storage after it’s been “deleted”. And if law enforcement submits a request asking for your files, we can pull it back up.