New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is using online influencers, some of whom don’t even live in NYC, to push talking points and more.
According to an extensive but friendly investigation from Columbia Journalism Review (CJR), Mamdani has an “army” of paid and nonpaid influencers connected through a Signal group called NYC Creators Announcements. Featuring over 200 members, the group is run by the mayor’s top officials.
Signal is an encrypted chat-messaging app.
BREAKING: A new report reveals Mamdani’s office runs a Signal group of 200+ influencers, feeding them talking points and clips to amplify online.
Some received $5,000–$20,000 through taxpayer-funded contracts, with little disclosure.
This is taxpayer-funded propaganda. pic.twitter.com/WM2m1rsGve
— Eyal Yakoby (@EYakoby) September 2, 2026
“Influencers who are selected to join the group fill out an intake form that describes where they live and what topics they are interested in,” CJR notes. “They will then receive invitations targeted to their interests, such as being invited to join a neighborhood canvass or film the preparation of a canvass.”
For just being a member of the group, participants receive nothing. Some influencers admitted they take part because they support the mayor. Others said they sometimes critique the mayor’s plans but remain in the group.
Other influencers, meanwhile, earn money through messaging campaigns commissioned by city agents. The pay ranges from just $5,000 to a whopping $20,000 per campaign. However, they don’t work directly for the city.
The way it works is that the city contracts marketing and advertising firms that then hire the influencers as independent contractors. Unfortunately, procurement notices usually don’t name the influencers involved, so the public is forced to remain in the dark about who’s being paid to say what.
Meet Allie O’Brien.
Two years ago she was posting about penguins. Today she’s one of hundreds of progressive influencers being handed New York taxpayer money to shill for socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
City Hall feeds them talking points. Some of them get paid thousands per… pic.twitter.com/VxIW4p8jGu
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) September 2, 2026
Officials with the Mamdani administration defended this system on the grounds that it’s cheaper and more targeted than traditional TV or radio advertisements and it also reaches younger audiences.
José Bayona, who served as the founding executive director of the New York City Mayor’s Office of Ethnic and Community Media from January of 2022 to May of 2024, put the cost comparison bluntly.
“Spending fifty thousand dollars on influencers gets you ten influencers who can replicate the message, while fifty thousand dollars on a TV ad is only one or two ads, and you cannot be sure anyone sees them, so talking about the math, that is the way to go,” he told CJR. “And once Mamdani won, he elevated all of this, and that is where we are today.”
The paid messaging campaigns have covered topics such as voting, healthcare appointments, composting, tenants’ rights, immigration information, and public-budget participation. The problem is the disclosure is very inconsistent.
CJR noted that while some influencer posts use a #PaidPartnership tag, others don’t. One Mamdani staffer even admitted that the paid influencer videos are purposefully designed to look organic versus like ads.
“When we have a paid relationship, I don’t know that we include a direct ad disclosure,” a marketing professional from a city agency told CJR. “Those videos tend to be integrated into our organic social and not categorized as an advertisement.”
“My understanding is when we pay an influencer and it’s not an ad, then it’s a different thing. Influencer marketing is still undefined and still a new frontier,” the individual added.
Some of the influencers uncovered by CJR included former Bronx preschool teacher Diego Leon, public school teacher Sari Beth Rosenberg, education activist Jose Vilson, and reporter/investigator Nile Berry.
🚨 A sitting NYC DOE teacher is in Mayor Mamdani’s City Hall Signal group.
Sari Beth Rosenberg still appears on the High School for Environmental Studies staff list.
Today she posted an “EXCLUSIVE” with Mamdani and Chancellor Samuels promoting the new AI policy, the same day… https://t.co/mtarvzNQ7e pic.twitter.com/auOWrQixRg
— Moshe Spern (@moshespern) September 3, 2026
Some of the influencers reportedly don’t even live in NYC, which raises serious ethics concerns.
“This is the Wild West right now, and people are coming up with the rules themselves,” Rosenberg, the public school teacher, admitted to CJR. “I truly believe there need to be standards and federal policy around this. There are so many loopholes.”
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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