Statement on NYC Govt Use of Paid/Unpaid Influencers and Officials Using Signal

In response to questions from elected officials, journalists, and other stakeholder groups, Reinvent Albany is publishing this statement summarizing our position on two separate policy issues involving government accountability and transparency that have been conflated recently in the news media. 

Reinvent Albany supports the City’s use of paid and unpaid influencers to promote city programs and policies. 

Reinvent Albany supports innovative government and the efficient use of taxpayer funds. Accordingly, we support the use of paid social media influencers by city agencies as part of their efforts to effectively market agency programs and policies to the public. Indeed, city agencies have successfully used influencers for years, including the Health Department to promote disease screening and the Campaign Finance Board to encourage people to register and vote.

Recommendations

• Pass a law or issue an executive order requiring agencies to include in their contracts or other agreements a requirement that paid influencers disclose on their messaging that they are a paid partner of whichever city agency is paying them. This is already done by some city agencies, but should be consistent across all agencies and can be as simple as a standard hashtag format like #PaidPartnerNYCDOH.
  
• Unpaid influencers have a First Amendment right to publish whatever they wish. However, influencers collaborating with agencies or elected officials should be asked to voluntarily disclose their relationship on their messaging per #PartnerNYCDOH.

Reinvent Albany opposes city officials using instant messaging apps, including Signal — especially for all communications with the public — consistent with the concerns raised in the 2025 Dept of Records Policy On Instant Electronic Messaging Records. 

As part of our long-time advocacy for a strong Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) and government transparency, Reinvent Albany has commented many times on the problems created by government officials using instant messaging apps like Signal, whose messages are stored on third-party servers. Even now in 2026, the City of New York has not developed a practical way for official records created by these apps to be archived or retrieved by agency FOIL officers, who cannot search them by key words like they can city emails. From the outside, the public cannot tell if a city official is using an instant messaging app because they are poorly trained and know nothing about the official records archiving requirements in the City Charter, or they are deliberately breaking the law and trying to hide or destroy city records. 

Contrary to recent pronouncements from City Hall, the City of New York, via the Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS), which establishes archiving requirement does have an official, written, policy on instant messaging that in part states:

Policy on Instant Electronic Messaging Records
Department of Records May 2, 2025
(Emphasis added by Reinvent Albany)

All digitally-stored data and information made or received pursuant to law or ordinance, or in connection with the transaction of official city business are municipal records. No records shall be destroyed or otherwise disposed of without prior approval from: (1) the head of the agency which created or has jurisdiction over the records, (2) the Municipal Archivist, (3) the Corporation Counsel, and (4) the Commissioner of Records and Information Services. […]

Substantive Messages which document or relate to the decisions, actions, or policies of a City office or agency must be retained and transferred to a format and platform that allows for their proper preservation. Retention must be scheduled in accordance with the relevant records series from agency’s retention schedule, based on the content of the email or any role-based considerations applicable to email or subject files. Due to the difficulty and burden of capturing, transferring, and retaining individual instant electronic messages, employees are strongly discouraged from creating instant electronic messages that are substantive in nature.