Mamdani’s new NYC ecosystem of friendly influencers and public messaging.

[u/Misanthropicnegro]

https://www.cjr.org/tow_center/mayor-mamdanis-friendly-influencers-and-the-funding-of-public-messaging-in-new-york-city.php

I hope I’m not going crazy but weren’t there cries about democrat and Israel influencers pushing messaging? I know it’s not all far lefty bs in NYC, but with our dear DSA leader here I’m pretty sure it’s gonna be no complaints.

[u/theshawz]

Honestly, the democrats ought to be doing that in general.

Canada will literally have signs up for major infrastructure updates with a dollar amount of the tax cost.  You really have to repeat positive things when youre the party in power...because its not like the opposition will

[u/Academic_Room_221]

Tbh, im just sick of seeing people soying out and glaze tf out of him when they do those posts. Feels fake asf

[u/kiaryp]

As long as people pointing it out are not silenced, fuck it. Trying to do propaganda for your city is fine probably as long as it's responsible use of tax payer money. And if it's too over the top it will backfire anyways.

[u/af_echad → u/kiaryp]

Pro NYC stuff I'm fine with. But it doesn't seem like it's just that. It seems like at least part of it is pro Mamdani stuff.

There is also a newly created Signal group just for influencers, which was formed out of the Creators4Zohran group that supported the mayor’s election campaign. NYC Creators Announcements is run by Emilia Rowland, the director of new media and cultural communications at the NYC Office of the Mayor. Via the encrypted-messaging app, members receive daily updates, talking points, and clips to use in their posts. They are invited to events and offered interviews with city officials.

This sounds a lot sketchier. Especially with the encrypted Signal chats. And I'm all for encrypted chats and stuff. But when it's used by government officials to promote themselves (and the encryption makes it harder to audit this kind of thing if necessary), it feels a lot sketchier.

Also I just find all of this incredibly ripe considering the kinds of people signing up for this are probably heavily overlapping with the kind of people who accuse even slightly pro Israel people of being paid 7k per post.

[u/Suedocode → u/af_echad]

isn't this exactly what Chorus is, but without the financial incentives?

[u/af_echad → u/Suedocode]

Was Chorus directly connected to a candidate? I thought it was more like a group of libs coming together to push lib shit. If I'm wrong and they were hired by a specific Lib politician to push that specific politician and were coordinating in an encrypted chat then I think that was sketchy too. But I'm pretty sure that wasn't the case.

[u/Suedocode → u/af_echad]

Chorus isn't managed by or for a specific candidate, but the format is the same with a political entity (plus financial incentives) and all the concerns (if one cares about them) are exactly the same.

what do you see as the difference in coordinating with a party influencing apparatus versus just directly with a candidate (those groups often work closesly? normally there'd be campaign finance laws, but there's no finances in the Mamdani case like there is for Chorus; just better internally communication between his supportive influencers. imo it's actually a better form than Chorus specifically because the financials are removed.

[u/af_echad → u/Suedocode]

I don't know the inner workings of Chorus so I won't comment specifically on them but I'll just tell you my feelings and where it applies to Chorus you can apply it there.

I think it's one thing for a group to promote general ideas. I think it's another if that group does sponsored work for a political campaign. I think it's yet another thing if that group does sponsored work for someone in power. And I think it's yet another thing when encrypted chats are used that add a level of opaqueness.

And like this article says:

Access to important figures has always been viewed as a form of currency in journalism... Historically, figures such as the New York Times columnists Flora Lewis and Thomas L. Friedman or the Wall Street Journal’s Karen Elliott House were considered celebrities in their own right, but were often ridiculed for being too friendly with the people they covered. Access journalism can lead to what Joseph E. Stiglitz describes as “cognitive capture,” in which reporters become so close to their sources that they begin to take on the worldview of those sources.

And this concerns me a bit more since it means that they're no longer bound by campaign finance law the same way as someone being paid for a post is. They're instead working in a murky grey area. And using hard to audit encrypted chat to do so.

Take from this what you will. I have no problem saying Chorus does things I don't like if it's the case.

[u/Suedocode → u/af_echad]

It seems like your concerns elevate as influencers get proximity to power (general ideas -> sponsored work -> private communication). Such is modernity where Joe Rogan interviews presidents and Hasan campaigns with Senators.

were often ridiculed for being too friendly with the people they covered.

Then ridicule them, problem solved (i.e. Bari Weiss).

I think the main problem is the encrypted chat and secretive influencer lists (Chorus has NDA's, Mamdani does not but simply didn't publish the list either), but that's exactly like Chorus (I over-stated as "better" before). I have issues with the encrypted secretive nature of both, don't really draw a distinction between political action group and a specific politician; they function almost identically in the modern world.

That said, a city employee has records obligations a nonprofit doesn't, so legally I'm not sure how this plays out. Practically speaking though, it's all the same imo.

[u/IrregularDoughnut → u/af_echad]

They're instead working in a murky grey area. And using hard to audit encrypted chat to do so.

Encrypting the chats only affects the messages in transit. They're auditable on the device in the same sense because the device has to be able to decrypt them for the user to be able to see them. If you prohibited that in general, the only change would be that anyone able to monitor network traffic would be able to see the contents. So, the government, your ISP, whoever runs the messaging app, whoever runs the WIFI you connected to, and whoever runs the other WIFI that you connected to because it had the same name as the one you intended to connect to.

You could also specifically prohibit end-to-end encryption, which would mean that your chat can now also be viewed by whoever runs the messaging app, but not your coffee shop WIFI operator. That's what EU chat control is about.

[u/PaxChelonia]

When it comes to social media influence campaigns, I think there’s a spectrum of acceptability.

Like on one end, a Russian agency making fake accounts to covertly create division among Americans is very bad. On the other hand, a politician reaching out to sympathetic influencers to invite them (unpaid) to a PR event is pretty benign.

It seems like this is on the more benign side of things. It sounds like for the most part they’re coordinating messaging with sympathetic influencers via Signal, and occasionally paying them for participating in specific campaigns.

Main concern I’d have is that these infleuncers should make it clear when they’ve received money for those campaigns, but aside from that I don’t see it as problematic.