Removing free user data is unfortunate, but understandable that it might eventually come to that.

A monthly subscription to regain access is questionable to me, since it'd mean they are still storing the images. A one-time fee could be justified for the cost of recovering the data from cold storage, but risks incentivizing intentionally luring in users then unexpectedly holding their data as leverage to have them pay up as a business model.

Claiming a user can pay to recover their photos, while not actually having anything to restore, is misrepresentation.