There may be a link but unless I see data suggesting otherwise I would expect this niche of niche activities which hardly affects new players directly to be a very small one, and I think it is not nearly as relevant as many other factors that make new players decide to drop the game, like boredom.
A more interesting question could be to wonder which has a bigger effect on new players leaving:
- suicide ganks (directly)
- complaints about suicide ganks which give new players a false impression they’re helpless against those ganks
As an experiment we could stop talking about suicide ganks for half a year to see if this improves the player retention numbers!