Plus: Instagram’s AI labels fall short; Xbox announces Game Pass change.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani built a direct line to more than 200 social media creators, essentially creating an influencer-esque press list.
The New York Times reports that Mamdani’s team has made creators a central part of how City Hall gets its message out. Columbia Journalism Review also found that a private Signal group called NYC Creators Announcements provides influencers with daily updates, talking points, video clips, event invitations and interviews with city officials. They’re not told or required to cover anything, so they have the freedom to promote events or announcements they’re interested in.
Creators share where they live and what they cover, allowing City Hall to send more targeted opportunities. The group includes smaller creators with modest follower counts as well as creators with millions of followers.
“At a moment of profound distrust in politics, our job is not to preserve decades-old communications norms or protect the gatekeepers who once controlled access to public information,” said Emilia Rowland, director of media and cultural communications for Mamdani.
Importantly, creators aren’t paid for being part of the Signal group or covering City Hall, operating more like media with story coverage. Some city agencies may separately hire influencers for public information campaigns, however.
“The monopolization of the media has resulted in legacy press hemorrhaging readers and viewers, essential reporting often locked behind paywalls and ownership increasingly concentrated in the hands of a small number of wealthy corporations and billionaires who exert their own editorial agendas over the news,” Rowland said.
Why it matters: Organizations can’t put all their eggs in one basket. Traditional outlets aren’t necessarily the best or only way to reach the public, especially as audiences fragment, paywalls grow and trust in institutions declines.
In other words, creators, niche voices and direct channels are a critical part of the communications mix.
Brands should be thinking more about building relationships with creators and other trusted voices before they’re needed. Understand who their audiences are, give them useful information and access, and think about where your audience is getting their info.
But there is still a catch here. If communicators want creators to be credible alternatives to traditional media, the relationships need clear rules around payment, access and disclosure. Otherwise, organizations risk creating a new trust problem while solving the old one.
How is Instagram’s AI detector performing?
Instagram’s AI labels are having another accuracy problem. The Verge reports users say the platform is tagging some lightly edited or entirely human-made images as “AI Content,” while fully AI-generated images sometimes go unlabeled.
The outlet tested several tools and found IG’s system was inconsistent, including missing images generated with Google Gemini while flagging others with much less AI involvement. Meta has not addressed the issue.
But now the mistake is creating headaches for brands. Cosmetics company About Face had some of its photos labeled as AI, even though its social media manager explained, “This photo was taken on my iPhone and then slightly edited by myself in the photo app.” The brand added: “Our brand uses real artists and real people to create everything you see across all our platforms.”
This is obviously out of a brand’s control, but it can create reputational issues anyway. An AI label can make audiences suspicious of how content is made. Social teams should keep an eye out for these labels, keep track of how images were created and edited, and be ready to explain the process if Instagram gets it wrong. With all the AI skepticism, an incorrect label can bubble up trust issues fast.
Why is Xbox changing its Game Pass?
Microsoft is putting monthly limits on Xbox Cloud Gaming beginning in November, a change subscribers are not happy about. The company acknowledged that the limits are a “meaningful change.”
They added: “We’re introducing this model because the cost of providing cloud gaming grows as more people use it and play for longer. Moving to monthly limits allows us to keep offering the service while continuing to invest in its reliability and performance. We understand that for some players the practical result is a higher cost.”
Microsoft also emphasized that it expects the change to affect only 4% of all Game Pass subscribers.
But on Reddit, users focused on what the limits truly mean for people who regularly use cloud gaming. Some questioned whether Microsoft’s 4% figure minimizes the effect by comparing heavy cloud users with the entire Game Pass subscriber base. The mood is bleak.
Microsoft still did some things well. They explained the business reason, acknowledged the customer downside and promised more information. But customers feel like the company is minimizing the impact of the change, which then becomes the main takeaway.
When announcing an unpopular change, communicators should test how the message lands with those most affected, rather than dropping the stat that makes the impact look miniscule. A better message might’ve been something like, “We know this is a significant loss for our heaviest users, and here’s why we’re doing it anyway.”
How is this journalist getting people to pay?
Newsletter writer David Covucci found that the best way to sell subscriptions is to build loyalty before putting up the paywall. Nieman Lab reports Covucci’s college football newsletter, FOIAball, has about 7,500 subscribers, including 420 paying $7 a month. He’s been testing paywalls, discounts and direct appeals to draw readers.
In one experiment, a paywalled scoop brought in one paid subscriber, while a free scoop brought in three.
“What makes people really pay isn’t any one piece,” Covucci said. “It’s them falling in love with what they are reading.”
His experiment is a good, simple reminder for comms pros. Before asking people to buy, subscribe, join or donate, give them enough value to care. Build the relationship first. The sales pitch works better when the audience knows, and cares, about what it would miss otherwise.
The post The Scoop: The inner workings of Mamdani’s influencer network appeared first on PR Daily.
