Pink Floyd's Roger Waters says he turned down a 'huge, huge amount of money' from Facebook to use a song, calling Zuckerberg 'one of the most powerful idiots in the world'

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  • Roger Waters, a founding member of Pink Floyd, said Facebook asked to use a song in an Instagram ad.

  • Waters said the company offered a lot of money for use of "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2."

  • "The answer is, 'F— You. No f—ing way,'" he told a crowd at a recent event, per Rolling Stone.

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Roger Waters, a founding member of the rock band Pink Floyd, says Facebook offered him a lot of money to use the band's 1979 classic "Another Brick in the Wall, Part 2" in an Instagram advertisement and he refused.

"It arrived this morning, with an offer for a huge, huge amount of money," Waters said this month at an event reported on by Rolling Stone. "And the answer is: 'F— you. No f—ing way.'"

"I only mention that because this is an insidious movement of them to take over absolutely everything," he continued, adding of Facebook's CEO, Mark Zuckerberg: "I will not be a party to this bulls—, Zuckerberg."

Far Out Magazine previously reported that the band refused to allow its music to be used for any advertisements that weren't for a "good cause."

-La Jornada (@lajornadaonline) June 12, 2021

Waters' comments were recorded at an event held in support of WikiLeaks' founder, Julian Assange.

The Rock & Roll Hall of Famer read from what he said was Facebook's letter asking to use the song: "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."

Waters said the company wanted to use the song 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.'"

He also took a jab at Zuckerberg by alluding to FaceMash, an app Zuckerberg created before Facebook to rate the appearance of women at Harvard, where Zuckerberg was a student.

"How did this little prick who started off by saying, 'She's pretty, we'll give her a four out of five; she's ugly, we'll give her a one,' how did he get power in anything?" Waters asked. "And yet here he is, one of the most powerful idiots in the world."

A Facebook spokesperson told Insider that Zuckerberg had nothing to do with the offer and that the letter Waters refers to came from Instagram's marketing team. The spokesman said the ad in question was only in the concept phase and the outreach was just to see if Waters "wanted to work with us on that particular song, but that's kind of all we really have to share. There wasn't really much else other than an initial concept phase."

"The initial details that were discussed mostly happened between third parties: our Instagram marketing agency and representatives for Mr. Waters. So that being said we 100% respect any artist's decision, whether or not they want to work with us on this kind of stuff," the spokesperson said.

Read the original article on Business Insider

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