This makes me wonder if, when you "delete" your account, they just flip this variable to disable login but still retain all of your user data.
I'm pretty sure this is the case. At least within some short timeframe (say 30 days or something).
First, I've read on reddit about cases where folks had their reddit accounts hacked, and then the black hats deleted the accounts. But reddit was able to restore them.
Second, I got permabanned, so I eventually left reddit and deleted my account. However, if you try to visit my account, you see that my account is blocked instead of seeing the user deleted account message.