Magnus Carlson would similarly lose to Messi

Relevant xkcd: link.

That's basically agreement with my "getting other people to submit to their arbitrary whims," isn't it? 

You're assuming "Russian troll factories" aren't aligned with your goals. 

some benign and silly misinformation -- e.g. "whales are fish" or something

Like the one with adding glue to your pizza sauce to get the cheese to stick, people have been trolling online without AI as the intended target.

♪ Yar har, fiddle-dee-dee! Being a pirate is alright with me! Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free. ♪ 

The state's enemies are always the lesser evil, and usually good.

Helping users who seem strangely uninterested in solving their problems

I don't think this is unrelated to the "Deaf" community's "hearing aids/cochlear implants are genocide" position. I suspect getting other people to submit to their arbitrary whims is the point, and the "problems" are in fact the means to that end. 

I think people would appreciate the directness.

"Directness" is the very thing Trump is renowned for, and his people certainly appreciate it, but do you think the same is true of the other side? I'd expect them to generally prefer the circumlocution of the typical politician.

Pliny was violating the terms of service. The bastards.

Hopefully, those trying to prevent an actually open AI model of comparable quality that one cannot be so easily shut out of by "bastards" won't succeed.

Yes. See Be my AI.

a device with a camera and a microphone and a little button

Why the retrofuturistic description of a smartphone?

lot of progress in AI Safety this last decade. Initially, AI systems weren’t checked against racism, sexism, and other discriminations at all.

I thank you for making clear what you mean by "AI Safety" (instead of employing the motte-and-bailey tactic so common here) so early in your post.

in order to not constantly have terrible experiences.

This explanation sounds like what they'd say. I think the real reason this is common is more a status thing: it's a pretty standard strategy for people to try to gain status by "dunking" on tweets by more famous people, and blocking them is the standard countermeasure.