Several social media influencers connected to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration are publicly defending their relationships with City Hall after the existence of a private Signal group involving nearly 200 content creators came under scrutiny, as reported by The New York Post.
The influencers have acknowledged that they receive information, event notices, policy details, and other material from the mayor’s office.
Some have openly described their willingness to promote information about the administration to their followers.
The private group, known as the “NYC Creators Announcement” chat, was revealed earlier this week in a report by the Columbia Journalism Review.
The arrangement is expected to receive further scrutiny during a New York City Council oversight hearing scheduled for Sept. 22.
One of the influencers who discussed her connection with the administration was Lisa Chin Mollica, a 48-year-old Brooklyn resident who operates the progressive, anti-Trump Instagram account “Vote In Or Out,” which has 1.1 million followers.
Mollica acknowledged that she has regular contact with City Hall’s media team and described receiving a steady supply of information and access.
“I genuinely do not know how such a small team manages to communicate with so many of us,” Mollica wrote to her followers.
“It is a constant stream of information, events, policies,” she added, saying that she was “genuinely happy to do it.”
Mollica said City Hall provides her with policy information, event notices, background material, and access. She also said she has never been paid by Mamdani’s team.
Her Instagram account describes itself as providing “news” along with other “perspectives” and previously created a non-partisan, fact-checked voter guide during the 2020 election.
The account also regularly posts anti-Trump and anti-ICE material while publishing posts focused on Mamdani administration initiatives.
One Sept. 2 post promoted the city’s new policy concerning artificial intelligence in public schools and featured Mamdani discussing the policy at a press conference.
One commenter challenged Mollica’s explanation that she does not work for Mamdani, writing: “You might not work for Mamdani, but the bias is very much real.”
Mollica’s account has also reposted material from other influencers participating in the Signal group.
The Columbia Journalism Review researchers reported that some of the digital content creators involved in the network had been paid by city agencies for outreach campaigns.
However, the researchers found limited information about the contracts. Mamdani’s team did not provide answers to questions about the arrangement beyond defending the use of Signal.
The administration also did not respond to questions Thursday about whether it used the Signal network to counter coverage of the CJR report.
Other influencers have also publicly discussed their involvement.
Cassie Willson, who has 314,000 Instagram followers, posted a screenshot Thursday of what appeared to be a $10,000 check and joked that she had received it from the Mamdani campaign.
“If they had actually done their research, they would have found this very real check that I have in my New York City apartment that I got from the Mamdani campaign,” Willson said.
She then praised the administration’s outreach to New York City creators.
Since Mamdani became mayor, she said his team has done “an amazing job of connecting with a bunch of New York City-based creators to tell us about stuff that’s going on in the administration like when they roll out new policies or programs.”
“A program or policy is only as good as the number of people who know about it, right?” she said.
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Willson also defended Mamdani after the mayor faced criticism for leaving Little Italy off an immigrant enclave map.
She posted about an Italian festival in Williamsburg and questioned its authenticity because it included foods such as funnel cakes and empanadas.
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Another influencer, Ariana Afshar, has also defended her relationship with the administration. Afshar, 30, has 433,000 Instagram followers, and her LinkedIn profile listed her as living in the Bay Area of California.
“I just cover the news and anything I say is because I genuinely love Mamdani’s administration,” Afshar wrote in an Instagram post Thursday.
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Miral Sattar, a 47-year-old publishing entrepreneur who operates the book-focused Instagram account @miralreads, acknowledged working with the Mamdani administration while maintaining that officials do not dictate her content.
“Sometimes I ask them for clips because I saw something I want to cover,” Sattar said.
Sattar said she has supported Mamdani since the beginning of his mayoral campaign.
“I was posting about Zohran before he was mayor. My kids and I canvassed for him when he was polling at basically 1%,” she said in an Instagram post to more than 28,000 followers.
Megan Klink, 28, who runs the progressive-policy podcast “Pretty Informed Girls,” also defended the network while criticizing traditional news organizations.
Klink described the Signal group as a “wonderful ecosystem of influencers and creators” and praised members of the mayor’s office.
“The people that work in the mayor’s office are incredibly f–king good at their jobs,” Klink said.
“They have created this wonderful ecosystem of influencers and creators and all sorts of people who are able to get out information that legacy media won’t cover,” she said.
Klink specifically cited what she characterized as insufficient coverage of warming centers. The Post and other news organizations, however, had reported on warming centers during the winter cold front.
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The growing attention surrounding the influencer network has raised questions about the relationship between government communications and independent social media content.
City Hall’s use of the private Signal group is expected to face additional examination when the City Council holds its scheduled oversight hearing Sept. 22.
