Pink Floyd’s music is timeless and widely recognizable, which makes it a prime candidate to be use for advertising purposes. Facebook was apparently hoping to make use of “Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2” for an Instagram ad, and the way Roger Waters tells the story, he was explicit with his response to an inquiry from Facebook.
Speaking at a pro-Julian Assange event recently, he talked about a letter he supposedly received from Facebook and outlined how he replied to it, saying, “It arrived this morning, with an offer of a huge, huge amount of money, and the answer is, ‘F*ck you. No f*ckin’ way.’ I only mention that because this is an insidious movement of them to take over absolutely everything. So 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… I will not be a party to this bullsh*t, [Mark] Zuckerberg.”
“¡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
Waters then read from the letter, which apparently said, “‘We want to thank you for considering this project. We feel that the core sentiment of this song is still so prevalent and so necessary today, which speaks to how timeless the work is.’” He continued, “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.’”
Watch Waters tell the story in the video above.