If you look at r/googlephotos on Reddit you’ll come across several posts from people who have had their accounts banned because of photos they have in their accounts. Most of the time it’s because of family photos of children. I have also seen posts from people who unwisely backed up their WhatsApp images folder, or backed up a drive without looking at what was on it first. Remember that researcher who lost their Google account because they had WWII Nazi documents in their Google Drive?
- Google Photos disabled my entire account for “CSAM” — long‑term account with family photos. Has anyone else had this happen?
- Google just banned my main account for uploading a 10-year-old backup and is accusing me of CSAM. (they got it back)
- Google permanently disabled my 6-year account over an alleged Child sexual abuse material (CSAM) violation — lost my income, banking access, and 6,000+ memories. What options do I have now? (they got it back)
I have photos there going back to the year 2000, but I never regarded Google Photos as a backup service. It was a fabulous photo-sharing site, but I have barely used it since 2024 and now have my own self-hosted Immich server instead.
Last week I did a Google Takeout of everything, just in case, as it will also download any photos I saved from shared albums.
Today I went to the large photos and videos page and deleted almost every item off that page.
Unfortunately, there isn’t a “delete everything from Google Photos” button. You’ll have to visit photos.google.com and select an image and then scroll down, and down and down… and then with shift pressed, click on the last image to delete. It then may take some time for Google to mark the images as deleted.
Honestly, I expect that the automatic CSAM detection they’re using has already scanned every single photo I’ve uploaded so I’m not worried about that. I’m not uploading anything else there either, but I’ve been meaning to move off Google Photos entirely for a long time.
It is really difficult to do. In my head I know that I have a Takeout backup of everything. I know that all the original photos are on my computer at home, and they’re on Immich now, but selecting photos of familiar smiling faces, of birthday parties, of holidays and festivals, and then clicking DELETE is hard.
They’re my photos. It was nice knowing you Google Photos.
If you want an alternative, self-host Immich or use Pixel Union, a hosted version of Immich where you get 16GB free before you have to pay for more storage. It’s also hosted in the EU, which is even better! I have an account there. I uploaded a few recent photos in this album for you to see what it looks like.
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@donncha Yeah it’s all pretty scummy. Seems to be made deliberately difficult to manage your storage, hoping you give up and pay for more.I’m trying Syncthing+Backblaze as a backup alternative, worked well for me so far.
@segfault ha, me too. I'm syncing photos from an external drive on my laptop to the laptop running Immich. Everything gets backed up to Backblaze.
@donncha You’ve raised a good point. I’ve just initiated a backup
@donncha I deleted my Google Photos a few years ago. I made sure to delete every album, photo, collection, whatever. I think I got the usual kind of message saying that it would be a while before they’re all deleted. A week or so ago some of them surfaced in a Spotlight search on my iPhone. And the photos were years old. I just don’t believe it when Google says it’s deleting something.
@garry yikes. That reminded me to check how much data Google Photos is using on my Android phone. 6.47GB just freed up and I'll delete the app. 🙂
Currently deleting 11626 photos from a Pets album.#GooglePhotos
@ronanmcd @donncha The Internet is for sharing, not backups, because the cloud is someone else's server.Either copy to an extra USB HDD kept at a friend / family place off site, or an old PC as a basic Linux server in a fireproof shed at the end of the garden with a Solar assisted UPS.Even old Cat5 will work nearly 100m at 1 Gbps and a cheap switch adds another 100m to the main router/WiFi.I'd only use internet storage to share or publish. My hosting is Ionos in Germany, < €20 per.month,
@donncha hopefully not one by one 😀
I deleted everything a number of years ago as part of my attempt to get away from Google knowing too much about everything. Bought a synology NAS and have used synology photos happily ever since. Auto backup of all phone photos, separate folders with all my processed camera photos, all viewable in a timeline or folder view, face matching (on device), view photos by geolocation. Very happy with it.