An investigation by the Columbia Journalism Review has found that New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani's administration gives roughly 200 social media influencers privileged access to City Hall messaging via an encrypted Signal group chat, which they use to promote municipal programmes online. The arrangement has raised questions about compliance with city record-keeping laws, since Signal offers a disappearing-messages feature and it is unclear whether it is switched on for the group, potentially allowing official communications to be deleted rather than archived as required.

The Signal group, called "NYC Creators Announcements," grew out of Creators4Zohran, a network that backed Mamdani's 2025 mayoral campaign, and is run by Emilia Rowland, the city's director of new media and cultural communications, whose team shares daily talking points and clips for influencers to repost on topics such as voting, healthcare, immigration, tenants' rights and composting. The city itself does not pay participants, though some receive between $5,000 and $20,000 per campaign from marketing firms contracted by city agencies. Mamdani, asked whether the practice breaches record-keeping rules, said his administration would "strive to fully comply" with legal requirements and would take corrective action if any shortfalls were found, adding that reaching residents through content creators was part of communicating with New Yorkers across all channels.