Avril Lavigne accuses Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg of 'bullying' Nickelback

Singer defends ex-husband after Zuckerberg made a jibe about the rock band

Avril Lavigne, Mark Zuckerberg (Getty)

Noughties skater pop sensation Avril Lavigne has accused Mark Zuckerberg of bullying the rock group Nickelback.

The bizarre turn of events came after the Facebook CEO revealed his new home artificial intelligence system Jarvis in a personal video featuring himself at home with his wife Priscilla, daughter Max and dog on his Facebook page on Tuesday.

After asking Jarvis for his daily schedule, to play some mandarin for his daughter and to put his toast on Zuckerberg asks Jarvis (which is voiced by the powerful lexicon of Morgan Freeman) to “play us some good Nickelback songs”. Jarvis replies: “I’m sorry Mark I’m afraid I can’t do that, there are no good Nickelback songs”.

“Good, that was actually a test,” the 32-year-old joked.

The video went down a treat on Facebook, amassing over one million likes and 77,000 comments including one from fellow tech billionaire Bill Gates, but over on Twitter Lavigne was not impressed.

The singer shared an open letter written to Zuckerberg where she accused him of “promoting bullying” via his “jab at Nickelback”.

“When you have a voice like yours, you may want to consider being more responsible with promoting bullying, especially given what’s going on in the world today,” she wrote before adding her further affirmation of the rock band’s success with the hashtag: “#NickelbackHasSoldOver50MillionAlbums”.

Her allegiance to Nickelback comes as no surprise given she was married to the frontman Chad Kroeger for two years before separating last year.

At the time, she announced their separation on Instagram, writing: “We are still, and forever will be, the best of friends and will always care deeply for each other.”

A representative for Zuckerberg did not immediately respond to a request for comment.