https://www.wired.com/story/doge-website-is-just-one-big-x-ad/
DOGEs Website Is Just One Big X Ad The source code for the new Department of Government Efficiencys official US government website points to X as its primary source of authority, while sharing links to the site sends users to x.com. At a press conference in the Oval Office <https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/12/tech/elon-musk-x-oval-office/index.html> this week, Elon Musk promised the actions of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) <https://www.wired.com/tag/doge/> project would be maximally transparent, thanks to information posted to its website. At the time of his comment, the DOGE website was empty <https://bsky.app/profile/joncooper-us.bsky.social/post/3lhwsmk4iac2u> . However, when the site finally came online Thursday morning, it turned out to be little more than a glorified feed of posts from the official DOGE account on Musks own X platform, raising new questions about Musks conflicts of interest in running DOGE <https://www.npr.org/2025/02/12/nx-s1-5293382/x-elon-musk-doge-cfpb> . DOGE.gov claims to be an official website of the United States government, but rather than giving detailed breakdowns of the cost savings and efficiencies Musk claims his project is making, the homepage of the site just replicated posts from the DOGE account on X. A WIRED review of the pages source code shows that the promotion of Musks own platform went deeper than replicating the posts on the homepage. The source code shows that the sites canonical tags <https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization> direct search engines to x.com rather than DOGE.gov. A canonical tag is a snippet of code that tells search engines what the authoritative version of a website is. It is typically used by sites with multiple pages as a search engine optimization tactic, to avoid their search ranking being diluted. In DOGEs case, however, the code is informing search engines that when people search for content found on DOGE.gov, they should not show those pages in search results, but should instead display the posts on X. It is promoting the X account as the main source, with the website secondary, Declan Chidlow, a web developer <https://vale.rocks/> , tells WIRED. This isn't usually how things are handled, and it indicates that the X account is taking priority over the actual website itself. Advertisement All the other US government websites WIRED checked used their own homepage in their canonical tags, including the official White House website. Additionally, when sharing the DOGE website on mobile devices, the source code creates a link to the DOGE X account rather than the website itself. It seems that the DOGE website is secondary, and they are prodding people in the direction of the X account everywhere they can, Chidlow adds. Alongside the homepage feed of X posts, a section of Doge.gov labeled Savings now appears. So far the page is empty except for a single line that reads: Receipts coming soon, no later than Valentine's day, followed by a heart emoji <https://www.wired.com/story/heart-emoji-lost-all-meaning/> . A section entitled Workforce features some bar charts showing how many people work in each government agency, with the information coming from data gathered by the Office of Personnel Management in March 2024. A disclaimer at the bottom of the page reads: This is DOGE's effort to create a comprehensive, government-wide org chart. This is an enormous effort, and there are likely some errors or omissions. We will continue to strive for maximum accuracy over time. Another section, entitled Regulations, features what DOGE calls the Unconstitutionality Index, which it describes as the number of agency rules created by unelected bureaucrats for each law passed by Congress in 2024. The charts in this section are also based on data previously collected by US government agencies. Doge.gov also links to a Forbes article from last month that was written by Clyde Wayne Crews, a member of the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that pushed climate change disinformation <https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/heartland-institute-leak-expos es-strategies-of-climate-attack-machine/> and questioned the links between tobacco and lung cancer <https://www.tobaccotactics.org/article/heartland-institute/> . It is also a major advocate for privatizing government departments <https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/in-shift-key-climate-denialist-g roup-heartland-institute-pivots-to-policy/> . The site also features a Join page which allows prospective DOGE employees to apply for roles including software engineers, InfoSec engineers, and other technology professionals. As well as requesting a Github account and résumé, the form asks visitors to provide 2-3 bullet points showcasing exceptional ability. The website does not list a developer, but on Wednesday, web application security expert Sam Curry outlined in a thread on X <https://x.com/samwcyo/status/1889527715029557607> how he was able to identify the developer of the site as DOGE employee Kyle Shutt. Curry claims he was able to link a Cloudflare account ID found in the sites source code to Shutt, who used the same account when developing Musk <https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-america-pac-election-denial-community -x/> s America PAC website. On Thursday, Drop Site News <https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/doge-fema-funding-access-social-security-num bers> reported, citing sources within FEMA, that Shutt had gained access to the agencys proprietary software controlling payments. Earlier this week, Business Insider reported <https://www.businessinsider.com/doge-staff-list-white-house-2025-2> that Shutt, who recently worked at an AI interviewing software company, was listed as one of 30 people working for DOGE. Neither Shutt, DOGE, nor the White House responded to requests for comment.
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