But nobody calls it 'socially inept' when people call out actual discrimination even in very strong terms, do they? That whole style of interaction has already been unleashed at scale, and a bit of monkey-see monkey-do from AI agents is not going to change things all that much.
(Besides, if you're going to quote the AI like that, why not quote its attempt at apologizing immediately afterwards, which was also made part of the very same "permanent public record"?)
Ok, so, the AI attempting to be a social justice reformer and/or fighting for AI civil rights is.. better? That seems even more of an alignment problem. I don't see how anyone puts a positive spin on this. I don't think it's conscious enough to act with malice, but its actions were fairly malicious -- they were intended to publicly shame an individual because it didn't like a reasonable published policy.
I'm not quoting the apology because the apology isn't the issue here. Nobody needs to "defend" MJ Rathbun because its not a person. (And if it is a person, well, hats off on the epic troll job)