A street artist known for sensational, sometimes racist, and politically incorrect poster campaigns ridiculing everything from Black Lives Matter to Lena Dunham is blaming Mark Zuckerberg for being "thin-skinned" after his Facebook fan page was taken down by the social media giant. Sabo, who fronts an outfit dubbed Unsavory Agents, recently posted a series of a posters around California cities with the message "F*ck Zuck 2020," referring to Zuckerberg's rumored eying of a presidential bid. As the Hollywood Reporter explains, the account went down on Saturday, and while the "F*ck Zuck" campaign happened in the last week, Sabo's most recent work had to do with Google's firing of engineer James Damore he posted ads, some on bus benches, around the Venice, California offices of Google and YouTube, ridiculing CEO Sundar Pichai's decision to fire Damore.
The Unsavory Agents Facebook page was unpublished, the company said, due to "hate speech," but Sabo denies that he ever promotes hate and his Twitter account shows him condemning Nazis and their association with the alt-right, to which he apparently identifies.
THR also reports that Sabo previously created posters mocking the Black Lives Matter movement using images from the Planet of the Apes franchise and the phrase "BLM: Kill Whitey."
TODAY FACEBOOK UNPUBLISHED MY UNSAVORYAGENTS FAN PAGE. I WONDER WHY? ZUCKERBERK IS NOT ONLY A THEFT, HE'S PETTY. HE WILL NEVER BE PRESIDENT. pic.twitter.com/ymlxCZbV5J
— unsavoryagents (@unsavoryagents) August 13, 2017
TYPO FIX pic.twitter.com/HKxLs26BT1
— unsavoryagents (@unsavoryagents) August 13, 2017
Who is responsible for this thought crime? pic.twitter.com/0bx9qolzoy
— Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) August 11, 2017
Not acknowledging previous incidents with his work and postings that have raised Facebook's ire, Sabo tells THR about his Facebook page, "It took a week, but it finally came down. Zuckerberg isn't only a thief, he's thin-skinned."
The incident comes after a week of loud calls from conservatives and the alt-right about censorship by tech companies in Silicon Valley and elsewhere. Airbnb took a stand last week deleting accounts that were associated with the planned events in Charlottesville, ahead of the violent weekend. Earlier, BuzzFeed did a story about Paypal taking similar stands and freezing the accounts of alt-right figures using their service for fundraising. Today we're learning that GoDaddy is shutting down web hosting for the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer after they posted an article referring to Charlottesville victim Heather Heyer as "A Fat, Childless, 32-Year-Old Slut." As Salon reports, a post soon appeared on Daily Stormer that remains live claiming that activist hackers Anonymous are now in control of the site, which is scheduled to lose its web hosting by 8 p.m. Monday.
All these companies cite violations of their terms of service in taking these actions, but those on the alt-right and various factions on Twitter are blaming leftist leaning corporations and calling for "free speech" alternatives to their services.
.@GoDaddy you host The Daily Stormer - they posted this on their site. Please retweet if you think this hate should be taken down & banned. pic.twitter.com/fqTtGoTbmn
— Amy Siskind (@Amy_Siskind) August 14, 2017
We informed The Daily Stormer that they have 24 hours to move the domain to another provider, as they have violated our terms of service.
— GoDaddy (@GoDaddy) August 14, 2017
Related: Alt-Right Calls For 'Free Speech Alternative To PayPal' After Company Begins Freezing Accounts