City Hall ran a private, encrypted Signal channel that funneled daily talking points to 189 social media creators, prompting a September 22 City Council hearing and a push for new disclosure rules.
City Council members are demanding answers after a Columbia Journalism Review report revealed a Signal group called “NYC Creators Announcements” where City Hall staff sent talking points, clips, and daily updates to 189 social media creators. Committee on Governmental Operations, State & Federal Legislation Chair Gale Brewer set a September 22 hearing to probe how that channel operated. Critics say the setup blurred lines between campaign activity and official communications.
The influencer network did not appear out of nowhere. It evolved from a campaign group named Creators4Zohran that worked during the mayoral race and then migrated into official messaging once Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office. That same cast of characters started doing government work, and some were paid through city contracts while others volunteered in ways that boosted their followings.
Choosing Signal for official messaging raises immediate record-keeping concerns because the app supports encrypted, disappearing messages that are hard to archive. Whether the chat used auto-delete or other ephemeral settings is still unknown, and that uncertainty creates potential conflicts with public records rules. Council members are rightly asking whether taxpayer-funded communications were preserved the way law requires.
City Hall has refused to disclose the influencer roster or the dollar amounts in play, which pushed Queens Councilman Phil Wong to draft legislation forcing transparency. Wong wants creators working with city agencies to label posts clearly as “Paid for by NYC” or similar language, and his bill would close the subcontractor loophole that can hide payments. The goal is to make long buried expenditures visible to the public and to auditors.
“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 d*** well it isn’t.”
Wong did not mince words and he kept pressing the practical question of residency and payments: how many of the 189 creators actually live in New York City and how many are collecting city money from other states. The administration has not publicly answered those direct questions, and that silence only fuels suspicion about who benefited and why outside contractors were used at all.
“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.”
Behind the scenes, some council insiders compare this level of secrecy unfavorably to past administrations and say the use of encrypted channels would have been intolerable under other mayors. One unnamed source said the reaction would be harsher if former Mayor Eric Adams had done the same thing and suggested the choice of Signal was a deliberate dodge. That complaint reflects a broader worry about deliberate opacity when it comes to public money.
“If Eric Adams did this, he would have his head handed to him on a platter.”
Another insider asked why encrypted messaging was needed if the program was above board and noted that some political allies have pushed back against oversight. The Democratic Socialists of America played a role in Mamdani’s rise, and critics say DSA-aligned voices have resisted demands for transparency. For a mayor who campaigned on a democratic-socialist platform, opponents see a pattern of preferring closed channels to open accountability.
The mechanics matter. Routing creator payments through subcontractors instead of direct city contracts can bury spending records and keep routine vendor disclosures from showing the true flow of funds. That structure, coupled with an encrypted communications channel, makes auditing nearly impossible unless the Council forces disclosure. Wong’s measure specifically targets that subcontractor route to make buried payments traceable.
Mamdani has faced other fights that underline the same dynamic: legal challenges to a pied-a-terre tax and lawsuits from grocers over a municipal supermarket plan. Those battles suggest this administration will contest outside scrutiny instead of embracing it. If the mayor can demand federal funds without hesitation, critics argue he can and should be equally willing to explain how the city spent its own dollars.
The September 22 hearing will put pressure on the administration to produce the full list of creators, the contract amounts, which agencies signed off, and whether messages were deleted. Council members say those records are central to enforcing public records laws and restoring basic transparency. If the answers are withheld, lawmakers are prepared to change the rules to prevent similar secret channels in the future.
