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The standard flow for "deleting" your account actually says "deactivate your account", and the fine print is explicit in that everything comes straight back when you log in again.

There's also a hidden link in the support pages somewhere that's supposed to actually delete your account (which is what's linked here)

I would assume essentially all the code since then has been rewritten. I wouldn't expect any behavior from back then to remain.

doubtful since it launched in 2004

It was 10+ years ago... apologies for getting the year wrong...