Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters slams Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg after ‘huge’ offer for song rights

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters launched an attack on Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg as he revealed he turned down ‘a huge amount of money’ for the rights to use one of the band’s songs in an Instagram ad.

Speaking at a pro-Julian Assange event in New York City on Thursday, Waters showed reporters a request from Facebook for the rights to use Pink Floyd’s 1979 song Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2).  

‘It’s a missive from Mark Zuckerberg to me with an offer for a huge, huge amount of money, and the answer is “f*** you, no f***ing way,”‘ he said. 

‘I only mention that because this is an insidious movement of them to take over absolutely everything.’ 

Waters also made reference to Zuckerberg’s FaceMash, a project he worked on before Facebook while he studied at Harvard, and which allowed users to rate the appearance of various women on campus.  

‘How did this little pr**k 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.’ 

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Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters (left) said he had turned down an offer for a ‘huge amount of money’ from Facebook for rights to use the song Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2) in an ad for Instagram. Waters, in particular, took aim at Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (right), calling him ‘one of the most powerful idiots in the world’

Waters (second from right) made his remarks to reporters at a recent pro-Julian Assange event in New York City, and suggested Facebook was censoring stories about Assange, who is facing possible extradition to the US for his role in publishing leaked US Army intelligence  

Waters appeared to allude to the social media corporation’s ability to control the flow of information, saying he would use his power to control the rights of his music, and do what could to push back.     

‘I will not be a party to this bulls**t, Zuckerberg,’ he said. 

Specifically, Waters told reporters that he believed Facebook sought to censor stories surrounding Assange, who is currently jailed in the UK and is awaiting possible extradition to the US for his role in publishing US Army intelligence leaks.

 Warning: Explicit language 

Pink Floyd’s Waters said he would not allow his works to be used to make the social media giant more powerful than it already is 

He said the social media giant wants to use the song to, ‘make Facebook and Instagram even bigger and more powerful than it already is so 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.”‘

A Facebook spokeswoman confirmed that the Instagram marketing team had reached out for the usage rights of Waters’ song and that the company respects the decision of any artist on whether or not they want to be involved. 

She noted that Zuckerberg had no involvement in the exchange.