Pink Floyd co-founder Roger Waters vociferously rejected Facebook-owned Instagram’s reported offer of “a huge, huge amount of money” to use “Another Brick in the Wall Part 2” in a commercial for the social media platform.
“And the answer is, ‘F*** you. No f***ing way,'” Waters said. “I only mention that, because this is the insidious movement of them to take over absolutely everything.”
“Those of us who do have any power, and I do have a little bit, in terms of the control of the publishing of my songs I do anyway,” Waters said, before calling out Facebook’s CEO, Mark Zuckerberg directly, saying “I will not be a party to this bull****, Zuckerberg.”
“We want to thank you for considering this project. We feel that the core sentiment of this song is still so prevalent and necessary today, which speaks to how timeless a work …,” Waters said, reading correspondence from Facebook.
“It’s true,” Waters responded. “And yet … they want to use it to make Facebook and Instagram even bigger and more powerful than it already is so that it can continue to censor all of us in this room, and prevent this story about Julian Assange getting out to the general public, so the general public could go, ‘What? What?’”
“No. No more,” Waters continued.
“¡Vete a la chingada!”: @rogerwaters a Mark Zuckerberg. El músico contó que le ofrecieron “una gran cantidad de dinero” por permitir el uso de Another brick in the wall II para promover Instagram. Lo narró en un acto por la libertad de Julian Assange (@Wikileaks)#VideosLaJornada pic.twitter.com/gEVqaor8Eo
— La Jornada (@lajornadaonline) June 12, 2021
“How did this little pr*** who started off by saying, ‘She’s pretty, we’ll give her a 4 out of 5, she’s ugly, we’ll give her a 1,’ how the … did he get any power?” Waters said later, in an apparent jab at Facebook’s earliest iteration, FaceMash. “And yet here he is, one of the most powerful idiots in the world.”
CNET reported that a spokesperson for Facebook said “that the song request came from the Instagram marketing team, not Zuckerberg himself, and that the company respects the decisions of musical artists about whether or not to work with the social network and its properties.”
Waters is a controversial figure for having supported a cultural boycott of Israel, as well as featuring Trump’s head attached to a pig’s body during his concerts.
Waters was speaking at a “recent New York City event at the People’s Forum to advocate for the release of Julian Assange,” who remains in custody in the United Kingdom while being wanted in the United States and is facing an 18-count indictment regarding charges of espionage.
This past weekend, a bipartisan collection of 24 British politicians requested that President Joe Biden drop all charges against the WikiLeaks founder and that the U.S. rescind its demand for Assange’s extradition.
“We hope that your administration will become a staunch ally of all those working to roll back the shadow of criminalisation against journalists and others who exercise the rights enshrined in the United States by the Constitution’s First Amendment,” the letter began. “Your administration, in partnership with the government of this country, has launched the campaign in defence of media freedom. It is in this context that we wish to raise with you the case of Julian Assange.”