by James Guttman at The Richest
Instagram was interested in using Pink Floyd’s iconic hit, “Another Brick In The Wall” for an upcoming ad campaign. However, when they reached out for permission, they learned that Pink Floyd wasn’t very interested in that idea at all.
In fact, while publicly speaking at a forum in support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, Roger Waters, one of Pink Floyd’s storied founders, said Mark Zuckerberg offered him “a huge amount of money” for use of the 1979 rock title. You can see the NSFW rant below.
@Facebook and @finkd wanting to acquire something doesn’t mean they always get to
Here’s @pinkfloyd ‘s Roger Waters responding to Mark Zuckerberg wanting to acquire The Wall
When sycophantic gatekeeping #EFFUXR s evolve a spine like in other industries #VR #XR #AR may be one. pic.twitter.com/kwLfr89UYk
— Navdeep Singh Rajwanshi (@TheGameVeda) June 13, 2021
The expletive-laced explanation showed that Waters had a firm grasp on what he feels the social media giant has done to society and that he’s not about to send Zuckerberg a friend request anytime soon.
“This is something that I actually put in my folder when I came out here today,” Waters spoke as he pulled a sheet of paper from his pile. “You have no idea what it is—nobody does—because it arrived on the internet to me this morning. It’s a request for the rights to use my song, ‘Another Brick in the Wall (Part 2),’ in the making of a film to promote Instagram.”
When the audience laughed, Roger pounced, offering the type of response that one might expect from the rocker, given the implied message behind his music.
“So it’s a missive from Mark Zuckerberg to me… with an offer of a huge, huge amount of money and the answer is, f- you! No f-ing way! And I only mention that because it’s the 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 control of the publishing of my songs I do anyway. So I will not be a party to this bull-, Zuckerberg. “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.”
Given the outlet he used to voice his anger, one might assume that Waters isn’t on board with the alleged privacy breaches that social media has to offer. Back in February of 2020, Roger joined protesters in calling for the releas eof Julian Assange from a high-level Belmarsh prison in the United Kingdom. The Australian has been locked away for seven years since seeking diplomatic asylum in connection to charges awaiting him in Sweden.
Assange claims that the charges were a United States attempt to…