The fact they had to hack in a workaround so != works is a point against it. And they acknowledge you can use repr()/str()/ascii() directly.
They want to keep it for str.format() compatibility, but I'm unconvinced. It hurts readability, and is redundant (There should be one-- and preferably only one --obvious way to do it.)
I really don't understand why the unnecessary extra "!rsa" modifiers are a good thing though.