linuxmemes

Ofc they can, that's why you can't just spam it and expect it to change much, other than you potentially getting smacked for spamming the api.
It doesn't hurt to force it if it's just never triggered before though, the survey trigger can be problematic on Linux.
Besides, there's plenty of Windows users who do the exact same thing.

All this would do is maybe weight some of the answers on which flavour of Linux and which hardware is being used in the favour of proactive users.

No, that's not how the survey works, it's opt-in. Sure privately they can see your system properties from the steam client, but they can't publish it unless you explicitly opt-into the survey. Survey fail to trigger = never opt-in = you're completely excluded. Forcing the trigger at the appropriate time when it's never triggered even after years is perfectly fine. Plus it forces the trigger to reset properly for next time. Like I said, you can only upload once; after that just wait patiently for it to trigger on its own as it should be functioning as intended from then on.