[0x_rs]

Google Photos does the same thing, aggressively prompting the user endlessly until they give in. A solution to that is disabling the malicious application and installing Google's Gallery app instead, that possesses no ransomware capability from what I've last heard of it. Make no mistake: Google and Microsoft know very well this behaviour will lead to people subscribing to services they have, for the most part, no use for. It is therefore explicitly by design, deceiving tech-illiterate people threatening to delete files they never meant to upload.

[tredre3]

You can log out from Google Photos on Android and it will stop prompting you (tap the icon upper right).

This is useful if you wish to maintain access to the editing tools (Google Gallery and most third party galleries I've tried lack simple things like adding text on a photo, and they often can't edit videos at all).

If you don't care about those tools then disabling Google Photos is indeed the best!

[rk06]

my wife had here google account storage full because photos does auto backup and even after i deleted the photos from google photos. Auto backup kicked in and re-added them.

Also, there is no good way to download all photos and videos for backup. they have to be manually selected. the ui is super frustating. and since the storage is shared with email, emails are blocked due to this