https://www.wired.com/story/doge-website-is-just-one-big-x-ad/
DOGE’s Website
Is Just One Big X Ad
The source code
for the new Department of Government
Efficiency’s “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 this
week, Elon Musk promised the actions of
his so-called Department of
Government Efficiency (DOGE) project
would be “maximally transparent,” thanks
to information posted to its website.
At the time of his
comment, the DOGE website
was empty. 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 Musk’s own X
platform, raising new questions about
Musk’s conflicts of
interest in running DOGE.
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
page’s source code shows that the
promotion of Musk’s own platform went
deeper than replicating the posts on the
homepage. The source code shows that the
site’s canonical tags 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 DOGE’s 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,
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.”
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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.
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 and questioned the links between
tobacco and lung cancer. It is
also a major advocate for privatizing
government departments.
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 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 site’s source code to
Shutt, who used the same account when
developing Musk’s America
PAC website.
On Thursday, Drop Site News reported,
citing sources within FEMA, that Shutt
had gained access to the agency’s
proprietary software controlling
payments. Earlier this week, Business
Insider reported 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.
