My approach involves two steps:

1. Never permanently delete anything.

2. Never implement anything that makes your product worse because of some silly regulation.

So if you “delete” your cat picture from one of my sites, I’ll flip the IsActive bit to false for you and nobody will ever see it again. Then when you realize that it was your favorite cat picture and how could you delete it forever I never told you to do that I’ll sue you, I can flip that IsActive bit back to true.

That situation has happened way more often than the one where the New Zealand Data Storage Task Force Enforcement Division has levied fines against me.

So it’s the best strategy.