Musk is both stupid enough and narcissitic enough to have legitimately thought his charm and personality were making MAGA flock to him on his own personal "I need my ego stroked" site. It's quite possible it never even occured to him that none of it was real.

Only if they cared enough to analyse the data though

No way in hell. Musk was probably like "let's show location guys, think of how much more noticing we could do tehe!"

And then he got results that triggered him, so he had them turn it off