Add The New York Post on Google The City Council will soon hold a hearing on the Mamdani administration’s use of a secret, encrypted messaging channel to peddle positive coverage to nearly 200 social media influencers, The Post has learned.
The council’s Committee on Governmental Operations, State & Federal Legislation, chaired by Manhattan lawmaker Gale Brewer, on Thursday scheduled the hearing for September 22.
Queens Councilman Phil Wong will also introduce a bill to require more transparency from City Hall about the questionable practice.
Wong’s bill, which was being worked on Thursday, could force influencers working on messaging campaigns with city agencies to clearly mark their posts and other videos as “Paid for by NYC” in some fashion.
Influencer Nile Berry is seen in an Instagram post with Mayor Mamdani as part of the positive coverage garnered by the mayor Instagram/urbanexplained Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s use of influencers to push his administration’s talking points was revealed this week in a bombshell Columbia Journalism Review report.
The study found that City Hall officials were communicating with 189 social media influencers in a Signal app group chat named “NYC Creators Announcements,” where they sent “daily updates, talking points and clips that they can use in their posts.”
Some influencers were even getting paid through contracts with city agencies “for work on particular messaging campaigns,” the report found.
Influencer Layla Taremi, who publicly supported the mayor during the election, is seen in another Instagram post. Instagram/laydayallday Others said they were just happy to heap on fawning coverage of Mamdani because they supported his cause and it helped boost their followers, according to the report.
It’s not known if the chat on Signal — a controversial encrypted messaging app when used by public officials — was set to auto-delete, which would run afoul of city record-keeping laws.
City Hall has also refused to make public the list of influencers — which the report said spawned from the Creators4Zohran group convened during Mamdani’s social media-savvy mayoral campaign — or what contracts they had reaped.
Part of Wong’s bill would aim to uncover any potential payments to digital creators hidden from the public because they got hired as subcontractors.
“New Yorkers don’t want their tax dollars going to grifting influencers from out of state who are paid to tell us everything here is great when we know damn well it isn’t,” Wong said.
“If City Hall has to pay people who don’t even live here to sell New Yorkers on how wonderful New York is, that tells you everything you need to know.”
But insiders told The Post in multiple conversations that shining a light on the Mamdani admin’s use of unpaid influencers to provide glowing coverage would prove to be more difficult.
“If Eric Adams did this, he would have his head handed to him on a platter,” one councilmember raged, referring to Mamdani’s predecessor.
“Why is everything so secretive? If it was really above board, they wouldn’t be using Signal; they would make the contracts public, and not have the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) all saying that there doesn’t need to be any oversight.”
