When I first ran Google Photos on my Android phone, it asked me if I want to enable automatic backup to Google. There were definitely some dark patterns there, but it was easy and obvious how to opt out.

If you care about not sending photos to Google, it's pretty obvious how to not have that happen.

IMO, Google is not the bad guy here, although when it was explained to them that the photos were legitimate, they should definitely have reenabled the account.

I'm OK with Google scanning photos that I send to them that will be stored on their servers. Honestly, how can they not?