Citizens Union's Ben Weinberg seeks paid-for influencer disclosure
Weinberg says government-paid influencer posts should be clearly disclosed as paid for by the government. He recommends mirroring federal disclosure guidelines and writing the requirement into city advertising contracts.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chair Brewer and Council Member Dina Waits.
My name is Ben Weinberg.
I'm the Director of Public Policy at Citizens Union.
I'll make three comments today, two on the topic of the hearing and one on Chair Brewer's bill.
So first, government spending on advertisements using social media influencer.
This came up here and at the September hearing.
We strongly encourage this advertisement to be clearly disclosed.
When people see an influencer post, they may not realize it's paid for by the government.
So the council should establish clear paid for by disclosure requirements that mirror federal guidelines, incorporate them into the city's advertising contracts, as the council often does,
establishing conditions on city contracts in Title VI, Chapter 1 of the Admin Code.
So this would be a simple fix.
We don't recommend addressing this issue by placing restrictions on individual public servants, as was discussed in the last hearing.