NYC Mayor Mamdani Lifts Government TikTok Ban He Used in Campaign

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani lifted the ban on governmental use of TikTok, reversing a restriction on the same platform he leveraged to win the mayor's office and one of several social media apps that defined his insurgent campaign strategy.

The move signals a sharp break from the cautious posture cities and federal agencies had adopted toward the Chinese-owned platform. For Mamdani, TikTok was never a liability but a primary engine. His TikTok and Instagram pages resembled those of a New York City influencer rather than a traditional political candidate, built on vertical videos with film-like filters, consistent fonts, and celebrity cameos from model Emily Ratajkowski and comedian Bowen Yang. Those videos amassed millions of views before he secured the Democratic primary.

The campaign's approach was methodical. Mamdani appeared on "Subway Takes," a podcast hosted by Kareem Rahma, bringing his pitch directly to Rahma's 1 million followers. He also joined David Hogg, the 25-year-old progressive activist who departed the Democratic National Committee after generating friction over a $20 million plan to primary older incumbent Democrats through his outside political group, Leaders We Deserve, for man-on-the-street-style interviews in Washington Square Park, a location already familiar to TikTok audiences as the home of viral series like "What's Poppin?"

Visual branding reinforced the digital strategy. Mamdani's cobalt blue, poster-like red, and taxi-cab or MetroCard yellow palette stood in sharp contrast to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo's muted red, white, and blue color scheme, projecting a generational and aesthetic divide between the two candidates that was legible even on a phone screen.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Bernie Sanders both endorsed Mamdani ahead of the primary, and on primary day Ocasio-Cortez hosted an Instagram Live conversation where Mamdani distilled his central argument: "If I win, that rent's getting frozen. If Andrew Cuomo wins, the rent's going up." That primary night concluded early on Wednesday, June 25, 2025, with Mamdani at an election-night event in New York.

The approach drew from a template that has reshaped modern politics. Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign demonstrated the returns available through long-form podcasts and viral TikTok videos; Mamdani applied the same logic at the municipal level and took the city's top office.

By lifting the TikTok government ban, Mamdani has now folded into official city policy the platform that carried him there.