At a press convention within the Oval Workplace this week, Elon Musk promised the actions of his so-called Division of Authorities Effectivity (DOGE) challenge could be “maximally clear,” due to data posted to its web site.
On the time of his remark, the DOGE web site was empty. Nonetheless, when the positioning lastly got here on-line Thursday morning, it turned out to be little greater than a glorified feed of posts from the official DOGE account on Musk’s personal X platform, elevating new questions on Musk’s conflicts of curiosity in working DOGE.
DOGE.gov claims to be an “official web site of the USA authorities,” however relatively than giving detailed breakdowns of the associated fee financial savings and efficiencies Musk claims his challenge is making, the homepage of the positioning simply replicated posts from the DOGE account on X.
A WIRED evaluate of the web page’s supply code exhibits that the promotion of Musk’s personal platform went deeper than replicating the posts on the homepage. The supply code exhibits that the positioning’s canonical tags direct search engines like google to x.com relatively than DOGE.gov.
A canonical tag is a snippet of code that tells search engines like google what the authoritative model of a web site is. It’s usually utilized by websites with a number of pages as a search engine marketing tactic, to keep away from their search rating being diluted.
In DOGE’s case, nevertheless, the code is informing search engines like google that when folks seek for content material discovered on DOGE.gov, they need to not present these pages in search outcomes, however ought to as a substitute show the posts on X.
“It’s selling the X account as the principle supply, with the web site secondary,” Declan Chidlow, an internet developer, tells WIRED. “This is not often how issues are dealt with, and it signifies that the X account is taking precedence over the precise web site itself.”
All the opposite US authorities web sites WIRED checked used their very own homepage of their canonical tags, together with the official White Home web site. Moreover, when sharing the DOGE web site on cell units, the supply code creates a hyperlink to the DOGE X account relatively than the web site itself.
“Evidently the DOGE web site is secondary, and they’re prodding folks within the course of the X account in all places they’ll,” Chidlow provides.
Alongside the homepage feed of X posts, a piece of Doge.gov labeled “Financial savings” now seems. To date the web page is empty aside from a single line that reads: “Receipts coming quickly, no later than Valentine’s day,” adopted by a coronary heart emoji.
A piece entitled “Workforce” options some bar charts displaying how many individuals work in every authorities company, with the knowledge coming from knowledge gathered by the Workplace of Personnel Administration in March 2024.
A disclaimer on the backside of the web page reads: “That is DOGE’s effort to create a complete, government-wide org chart. This is a gigantic effort, and there are possible some errors or omissions. We’ll proceed to try for max accuracy over time.”
One other part, entitled “Rules,” options what DOGE calls the “Unconstitutionality Index,” which it describes as “the variety of company guidelines created by unelected bureaucrats for every legislation handed by Congress in 2024.”