Since you get the ram back , and the records are deleted, then what happens to the information that was recorded on the blockchain?
Does it get erased forever? If it does, then it doesn't seem to add up, isn't blockchain suppose to store the information indefinitely across time
When you 'delete' records against an EOS smart contract it is simply removed from RAM on the EOS nodes. Just like your own computer, they can only hold so much data in RAM before they get full which is why there is a RAM market to begin with.
However, a record of the action which put the data in RAM initially is always held, retaining the Blockchain effect.
To simplify a human can only remember so many phone numbers in their head, however, they can write down as many phone numbers on paper as they like.
This is why any records in RAM should be there for a good reason, you wouldn't wanna put in photos or long pieces of text. But data the EOS nodes can interact with, like a like count or some other mathematical function.
dApps like Decent Twitter have been able to pull off RAM free transactions by simply not storing state in RAM at all but in transaction history. An EOS node then runs and listens to all the tweet actions made against the smart contract and serves it to clients.
