Google AI Studio fakes data deletion. VRP auto-banned me in 60s for reporting it

I doubt much people using Google think that their data would just magically disappear the moment they click a button, to the contrary, I believe most qualified users would know that their data is forever stored, maybe "anonymized" sure (but can still be correlated back).

If some users think this, have they question the Why would they do it? Why would Google lose money that way? ToS is irrelevant when it comes to what's running on their own private infra.

Anybody who has ever run a website with customer data can instantly understand why they do it this way. I don't see any malice.

It's simple, really. You have a website where people can upload their cat photos. There's a delete button. People click the delete button, read the "This will really Delete your Thing. It's Permanent. You CAN'T GET IT BACK!" warning, and click the confirm button.

Then you get an angry email (and twitter post, and blog entry, and Reddit mob) saying "I can't believe you deleted my photo without asking. That was my favorite cat photo it was my only copy I'LL SUE YOU!@!!"

So you go into your console and flip the .isActive bit back to 1 on that photo, send off your stock apology, and get on with your day.

To run your business any other way is madness. You're not training or selling or otherwise misusing that cat photo. You just don't want to deal with that hassle every day. So you "delete" things by moving them someplace where they're not public anymore.

It's just what you do...

I want to take this seriously, but eight (slop?) rehash of the story on the blog isn’t helping with credibility. Pro tip: don’t do that, however triggered you are, it definitely doesn’t help.

I don’t use Google AI Studio so can’t verify, good luck.

Guys, please forgive me if my English is crappy. My native language is Hungarian, so I use AI to write my replies and the English articles. I've been working on this case for almost a year now, and I just want this big corporation to finally be held legally accountable! This whole thing has consumed so much of my time and my nerves. Honestly, it's starting to break me down a little. But I'm not backing down! It’s a really ugly thing that they are stealing people's data. Authorities like NOYB, the DPC, and the AI Office basically don't give a shit, even though I sent them everything. Either the bureaucrats are idiots, or I just don't know why the case isn't moving forward at all. Please look at the many web archives I’ve linked here in the comments. :) THX all!

Look at these archives here, they even banned me from their official forum, but I saved hundreds of my posts. Look at this: https://archive.ph/https://discuss.ai.google.dev/* and this: https://archive.org/details/@gy_rgy_ist_kovics/web-archive and this: https://archive.org/details/@gabor_gabor_freemail_hu/web-arc... and this: https://ghostarchive.org/search?term=https%3A%2F%2Fdiscuss.a...

Kudos to the author for not being so bitter and jaded, like me, and reporting this thinking some change might come.

I have mostly resigned myself to watching in unsurprised disgust as tech companies (aided by oodles of HN users who work there!) ruin everything they touch with legal impunity.

I am really glad you guys are starting to understand the core problem with Google's scam here. The fact that they lie on their buttons—promising that prompts are deleted, and literally stating 'Permanent Deletion' on the Trash button—but then in reality you can restore them with their 'special' robot, is a massive fraud. When you click that button, you are demanding that Google deletes your prompt, which is exactly what their UI promises they will do... Every single piece of their documentation says something different. In the Gemini API docs, they promise a 24-hour automatic prompt deletion (TTL). Then, the Drive Trash docs advertise a 25-day recovery window (supposedly against accidental deletion, which I believe lacks any legal basis). The reality is that this is a lie just so they can hoard our data! This is illegal. They also mention 55 days, which I believe is calculated by adding the 30 days in the trash plus the 25-day drive recovery window. But guys, think about it for a second. You are not restoring the prompt; you are restoring the pointer, the JSON file. And to make it worse, there are multiple versions of this file inside Drive, depending on how old the prompt is and how much you chatted with the AI! If it were really about deletion, they would just be honest and write: 'Sorry, we don't delete anything, we keep it for 25 or 55 days.' But no, they constantly lie in the button texts. They claim they are deleting the 'prompt', when they demonstrably aren't, because it's just a JSON file. It’s just a pointer. It is NOT the data on the backend... They are lying in an incredibly disgusting way, especially since EU laws don't even allow this. And when I threw this in their faces, what did they do? They banned me from their forums, and they permanently banned me from the VRP... This tells you everything you need to know.

The problem is that Google is lying in its documentation because they don't delete anything. If they did, the chat wouldn't work, since I am only restoring the JSON with the robot. Understand this :) If you understand this, because you are not stupid, then you will realize what a vile, lying company Google is! The buttons are lying right off the bat. And what does 'recovering permanently deleted files' even mean? I'm not even recovering the prompt, just the JSON file. And another thing: if I permanently deleted something, how can they restore it? This is called a scam!