Can the confluence-users group be deleted? What ramifications might come about if it is deleted? Would removing the group force the entire application to be "closed" rather than "open"? Any ideas, insight would be appreciated.
Depends on how you are using the group.
By default, it's a group meaning "anyone who can log in", so if you kill it, you may well find no-one can log in any more. Your space owners may have used it in their permissions, so again, people will lose access.
But, if you've set up your own login group and aren't using confluence-users anywhere, then yes, it's safe to delete it.
you may get more information from the following issue
https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/CONF-26864
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