I agree, I'd strongly lean toward a technical reason rather than conspiracy here - especially since, if a dude is deleting their account, you lost them already.

I agree, I'd strongly lean toward a technical reason rather than conspiracy here - especially since, if a dude is deleting their account, you lost them already... if they can't delete it in a reasonable time frame they'll just walk away. And it's not like they'd be the size they are and not have metrics on people trying to delete.