I doubt Facebook's name change is driven by the last few weeks of bad PR. The relevant model seems Google's change to Alphabet, which wasn't driven at all by an attempt to flee the negative associations with their previous name.
I agree Zuckerberg had probably been thinking about it, particularly since Snow Crash is assigned reading for some of his employees.
It seems, though, that the timeline was moved up dramatically to both distract from other Facebook-related news, and to escape from the toxic branding that is Facebook at this point.
Switching to a name which is already a common english word with many uses, seems like an attempt to make future criticism more confusing, as well.
