On Feb 15, 2025, at 6:17 PM, Jason McKemie
<j.mcke...@veloxinetbroadband.com> wrote:
This seems about par for the course with these guys.
Scary stuff.
I love how this administration uses the term "maximally
transparent", or some derivation thereof everywhere they
can. I guess if you say it enough, it must be true, right?
On Sat, Feb 15, 2025 at 5:59 PM Ken Hohhof
<khoh...@kwom.com> wrote:
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 <http://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 Musk’s own X platform, raising new
questions about Musk’s 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 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
<https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization> direct
search engines to x.com <http://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 <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-exposes-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-group-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 site’s source code to Shutt,
who used the same account when developing Musk’s
America PAC
<https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-america-pac-election-denial-community-x/>
website.
On Thursday, Drop Site News
<https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/doge-fema-funding-access-social-security-numbers>
reported, citing sources within FEMA, that Shutt had
gained access to the agency’s 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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