Welcome to "#SocialStocks," The Fly's weekly recap of Wall Street's reactions to social media stock news.

HOUSE PAVES WAY FOR TECH LEGISLATION: The House Judiciary Committee has formally greenlighted a report accusing large tech firms of buying or crushing smaller companies, Reuters' Diane Bartz reported, citing Representative David Cicilline's office. With the approval during a hearing, the more than 400 page staff report will become an official committee report and lay the groundwork for legislation to rein in the market power of big tech companies such as Alphabet (GOOGL), Apple (AAPL), Amazon (AMZN), and Facebook (FB), Bartz says, noting that the report was approved by a 24-17 vote that split along party lines. "Amazon, Apple, Google, and Facebook each hold monopoly power over significant sectors of our economy. This monopoly moment must end," Cicilline said in a statement. "I look forward to crafting legislation that addresses the significant concerns we have raised."

ANALYSTS EYE SNAP AHEAD OF EARNINGS: Piper Sandler analyst Thomas Champion said he is "constructive" on Snap (SNAP) shares into the Q1 print on April 22. The company continues to monetize new features of the platform and remains under-monetized versus peers, Champion told investors in a research note. The shares are down 9% off the highs from February when management guided to several years of 50%-plus sales growth, he notes. The analyst reiterated an Overweight rating on the stock with an $83 price target. MKM Partners analyst Rohit Kulkarni maintained his Buy rating and $83 price target on Snap ahead of Q1 results. The analyst stated that the intra-quarter data points that include analyst day commentary, political ad spend disclosure, Apple launch delays, and app downloads suggest that there is a greater likelihood of a "beat and in-line" quarter, despite recent trends of rising Street estimates. Kulkarni further expects Snap to add about 10M daily active users during Q1, adding that he would view greater than 1M net adds in North America DAUs as a "clear positive". Lastly, Cowen analyst John Blackledge raised the firm's price target on Snap to $88 from $86 and kept an Outperform rating on the shares. The analyst said he is "bullish" heading into earnings and he raised both Q1 and long-term estimates.

FACEBOOK DEALS WITH HACKERS IN PALESTINE: Facebook shared actions it took against two separate groups of hackers in Palestine - a network linked to the Preventive Security Service and a threat actor known as Arid Viper - removing their ability to use their infrastructure to abuse the company's platform, distribute malware and hack people's accounts across the internet. Facebook said that one of the clusters of unconnected cyber espionage targeted primarily domestic audiences in Palestine, while the other targeted audiences in the Palestinian territories and Syria and to a lesser extent Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Libya. "To disrupt both these operations, we took down their accounts, released malware hashes, blocked domains associated with their activity and alerted people who we believe were targeted by these groups to help them secure their accounts," the company said. "We shared information with our industry partners including the anti-virus community so they too can detect and stop this activity, strengthening our collective response against these groups across the internet. We encourage people to remain vigilant and take steps to protect their accounts, avoid clicking on suspicious links and downloading software from untrusted sources that can compromise their devices and information stored on them."

PINTEREST EXPANDS SHOPIFY PARTNERSHIP: Pinterest (PINS) said in a statement that it is expanding its partnership with Shopify (SHOP) to 27 new countries. The Shopify Pinterest channel is now live in these new countries including Australia, Austria, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK, the company said. "Now, more than 1.7 million Shopify merchants around the world have an easy way to bring their products to Pinterest and turn them into shoppable Product Pins that are discoverable across the platform. Shopify merchants advertising on Pinterest through Shopify will also have access to Dynamic Retargeting for the first time, which will enable them to re-engage with Pinners who have already expressed interest in their products on Pinterest." Bernstein analyst Mark Shmulik attributed the recent 8% selloff in shares of Pinterest to the circulation of a competitor research note pointing to indications of "more muted channel checks," but he thinks those concerns are overblown and views today's selloff as a "tactical buying opportunity." His own checks have pointed to strong spend levels "across the board" in the space, with "some pleasant surprises" from both Pinterest and Snap (SNAP), said Shmulik. While admitting that Pinterest channel checks are "always challenging," the analyst said "this is as strong as we've ever heard" in terms of his checks on ad buyers. Shmulik has a Market Perform rating and $85 price target on Pinterest shares.

FACEBOOK TEASES NEW FEATURES: idji Simo, head of Facebook App, confirmed plans for a social audio experience akin to Clubhouse. He stated in a post to the company's site: "At Facebook, we've seen the continuing rise of audio on our platforms, from audio calls to audio messages on WhatsApp and Messenger. We're working to make audio messages easier to record, and more fun - including the ability for people to send familiar sound clips to their friends that range from sound effects like crickets chirping to quotes from popular songs. But we know there are more social experiences to create to help people say what they want to say, discover new voices they haven't heard before, or exchange ideas at the speed of sound." Simo added: "The first thing we're building is a set of new audio creation tools. Just like we did for photos and videos, we want everyone to have tools that are powerful enough for the pros, but intuitive and fun - like having a sound studio in your pocket... These audio creation tools will enable you to create Soundbites - short-form, creative audio clips for capturing anecdotes, jokes, moments of inspiration, poems, and many other things we haven't yet imagined. We'll start testing Soundbites over the next few months with a small number of creators and refine the product with their input before making it available to everyone... While we're big believers in the power of short-form audio, we also know that some stories and conversations deserve more airtime... Within the next few months, you'll be able to listen to podcasts directly on the Facebook app - both while using the app or when the app is backgrounded. And because it's still hard to discover podcasts you like, we will help you easily find new podcasts and episodes based on your interests, comment on them and recommend them to your friends. And podcast creators will be able to reach and connect with new listeners - all directly within the Facebook app... We're also going to start testing Live Audio Rooms and we expect it to be available to everyone on the Facebook app by the summer." This came shortly after Reuters noted that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said during an interview that his company is working with Spotify (SPOT) on a feature to share and play music. 

Facebook's Instagram announced a new way to "protect people from seeing abusive DMs in the first place, as well as the ability to prevent someone you've blocked from contacting you from a new account." Instagram is introducing a new tool which, when turned on, will automatically filter DM requests containing offensive words, phrases and emojis, so users never have to see them. This tool focuses on DM requests, because this is where people usually receive abusive messages - unlike your regular DM inbox, where you receive messages from friends. Instagram said it would start rolling out this feature in several countries in the coming weeks and will look to expand to more countries over the next few months. In addition, the company is also aiming to make it harder for someone a user has already blocked from contacting them again through a new account.

Lastly, Facebook is seeking to "normalize" the idea that broad-scale scraping of user data from social networks such as its own is a common occurrence, as the social media giant continues to face scrutiny over a leak of over 500M users' phone numbers, Vice's Joseph Cox reported. The company's position come to light in an internal email accidentally sent by a Facebook representative to a reporter at Dutch publication DataNews, and Facebook later confirmed the authenticity of the email to Vice. According to the email, Facebook is not planning further statements on the scraping issue, though longer term it expects more such incidents and wishes to frame this as a broad industry issue and "normalize the fact that this activity happens regularly," Cox said. Facebook could face a fine in the billions for its leak of data.