Social Security Administration Moving Public Communications to X
wired.com
wired.com
For readers, it is confusing and messy to know which platforms acts as a medium for communications. And usually these platforms require login, or nags for it, and doesn't show posts on chronologically to get clear understanding of the news events.
For organizations, there is a risk of shadow banning/closure of account, therefore not having any control of archivability and visibility of communications.
The best and clearest approach for communications probably is your own website with comms section, and post one-sentence summary + link to your website for a variety of social medias for greater visibility. There should be only one long-standing statement/source of truth for each newsworth event. Except of course if your strategy is to manipulate audience with confusion.
Also good thing the primary audience for Social Security recipients is in the X user demographic? I gotta say this could have been an incredible opportunity to revolutionize technology for the people but it was squandered by self-dealing morons.
In less than 100 years we went from sending news via envoys or on horseback to compressing it and sending it over a wire.
The only time you would ever go to the effort to send news, back then, was if it was important or vital, but crucially it was actionable.
The decay comes from using the same channels, or even creating new channels, to disseminate info that is not meant to be actioned but simply consumed.
The regulations around that production were stripped away and so was the trust that the info you now consume is valid.
Because the best way would be to put the content on the official pages and post the link (+ relevant excerpt) to social media.
But that takes engagement away from the sites and they hate that.
Elon: divest from your private assets or get the fuck out of the government. Otherwise you're a corrupt official.
Seems like he fits in real well where he’s at.
For example, the 2019 blizzcon SC2 finals where Zerg overran with a busted Nydus meta. You can't blame Reynor & Dark pushing their advantage to reach each other in finals. The game went on to be patched
Same goes with hating draws in chess. Players are trying to win a tournament, they'll make the moves they feel will make that happen
Another example: hating on Protoss in TvP in broodwar. The game won't be patched. If you can't deal with it then hate the game, not the Protoss
I wonder if that’s the point of having a borderline villainous public image - people are used to your antics and more likely to ignore an extra crime.
You're directing this at Elon - but you are aware just about every single congress critter, and every other high-level government official holds private assets and profits off of them during their tenure in the government... right?
> Exclusivity agreements with private companies have NO FUCKING PLACE in public governments.
I hope you were this upset about Cheney as well. What about Palantir and their army of lobbyists? Oracle and theirs? Sig Sauer and theirs? Lockheed Martin and theirs? AWS and theirs? I can go on forever... This is super common in government, and no it's not limited to one party or another. It's everywhere.
It is wrong every time. But only now we get the all-caps writing and chest thumping only the likes of reddit can be proud of.
Nancy Pelosi is perhaps the most prolific insider trader of our lifetime. None of this is new... it's been going on since before any of us were born.
It should be put to an end - but we can't pretend the current administration is doing something so abhorrent and clutch our collective pearls in shock. We can't hold one party (that we disagree with) to a higher standard than our "own" people. That's hypocritical and not a foundation upon-which agreement and consensus can be formed.
As-is it likely won't pass because it limits spouses and dependents as well - which will get into lots of complicated personal rights issues. The same rights issues that have been argued in favor of keeping the status quo (in regards to sitting members). Spouses and dependents didn't "sign up" to become government officials, so it'll be difficult to limit their liberties in this way. I do support the sentiment, however.
The Speaker of the House controls what bills get put to a vote. In the time AOC has been in Congress, that has been either a Republican, who would never put that bill to a vote; or Pelosi, who also said she would not do it.
Some of us have been howling about these issues for decades.
Who were the primary benefactors of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act? What about the CHIPS Act? Follow the money and you will be completely god smacked at the insanity that's being going on right under people's noses.
The riot is quelled by drawling people into their camps... left or right, red or blue, us vs. them.
"Our Side" can do no wrong, it's "your side" that's corrupt and evil. Republicans strongly asserted the Biden Administration was corrupt - and this was brushed aside by Democrats. Same as with Trump the first time around, Obama before him, Bush, so on and so forth.
People are being manipulated by their leaders because it's politically convenient and raises a lot of money.
Dems don’t tell ice to kidnap people in plain clothes
Just because corruption exists everyone doesn’t mean it exists equally. You’re pushing a lazy train of thought
As it should, republicans strongly asserting something does not mean much. It usually just mean they find the politician too popular. They "strongly assert" about 20 false accusations any given week. That is how the whole conservative machine works.
They admire Trumps criminality and frauds. As far as republicans are concerned, these make him cool and manly.
The self dealing Musk does was not the norm previously, actually. Open successful extortion/destruction of law companies that sued politicians was not norm, now it is. President selling cars was not the norm, now it is. I could go on and on.
1. False equivalence: Elon Musk's interaction with the federal government is unprecedented and comparing it to lobbying of companies is hysterically bad faith.
2. Appeal to hypocrisy: whether or not someone cares about Cheney or others profiting or doing bad things in government, that has no impact on the argument against Musk.
3. Ad hominem: yes, yes, only the likes of reddit, except here we are, not on reddit.
4. Tone policing: the content of ones argument is completely irrelevant to how emotional the present it or how emotionally they feel about it. They may thump their chests as much as they like.
The world's richest man is also the most powerful bureaucrat in the world, and he's self dealing to his own company which is arguably the most powerful propaganda machine ever invented.
It's difficult to not despair in such a time.
I have the feeling that the legality of this involves a bunch of concepts I don't know about.
E.g., what constitutes an official communication, and how accessible they're legally required to be.
That said though EULAs aren't law. If it's just a contract between two parties, you are free to violate it and they are free to violate it as well.
can I scrape government Twitter accounts and mirror them without paying Elon for API access? because I can scrape ssa.gov just fine.
schools do the same thing, but 1000% worse.
Oh, and online tax stuff or dmv? all logs into google.
I assume the last sentence was insincere.
Your employer requires you to log in to view internal communications. Not public. And citizens employ the government. Not vice versa.
Surely it is a coincidence that this would also likely boost account registration numbers and ad impressions for Musk’s company.
Are you willing to sue? Consult lawyers. EFF would be a good start.[1]
(Nothing to do with his political views, but moves like this or meddling in foreign affairs with Starlink after customers had purchased the devices free and clear)
But lately has turned into a cesspool. Everytime I go on, I’m assaulted by fight videos, gambling ads, porn bots, ragebait, and the worst extreme takes from the left and the right.
It got so bad I started reading paper books in my off time again.
Can simply make a new genpop type Twitter account and immediately see them for yourself, the uncurated experience is heartbreaking.
You seem to be describing my reddit experience to a "T".
I created a brand new account recently to get away from all of the doom-n-gloom politics that polluted my feed to the point of being just downright frustrating to look at. It took all of a week to be right back to where it was, despite my best efforts to join and engage in subs that have literally zero to do with politics. What the hell does bread making have to do with seeing 843 unfavorable pictures of Trump on /r/pics every single day?
The demographic shift to a bunch of lovely young ladies on X is because of how much the next generation values maximal truth seeking
The way this administration sees it, separating suckers from their money is virtuous -- if you're smart enough to defraud them, you should be rewarded for your efforts. But if you're dumb enough to be conned, you got what was coming to you. Be smarter next time or perish.
This is the new morality.
kind of seems obvious when you think about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Trade_Commission_v._Me....
But with the ones in my State, I have a tiny chance they will try and stop this.
Why do you keep asking this when these illegal acts have been happening every day for months? Genuinely, did you just awake out of a coma?
> Can I sue because of this as a non Twitter user ?
Good luck finding a lawyer, as they're almost certainly going to lose their job if the suit turns out remotely succesful.
They will not exist anymore. Literally the first words of TFA:
> The Social Security Administration will no longer be communicating with the media and the public through press releases [...]
/enough inet today
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/government-use-of-so...
If Musk wants to run an official government communication channel, he will have to follow the laws that apply to communication with the government, of which there are many.
What happens if he doesn't follow those laws? Is there any way that he would face justice considering the current situation?
Absolutely more than anyone at DOGE...
It's emblematic of what's happening across the government. Serious people are being replaced by incompetents who are there purely for their loyalty to the President and have no scruples or sense of public service.
Maybe next month it’ll be announced that Social Security payments will only be available through the upcoming payment feature of X.
There is a decent amount of logic here, and I think it would have happened even if a neutral party owned X/Twitter
The goal should be to maximize access at minimal cost. Social media posts maximize access, and it's not hard to post to multiple sites at once. There are a million different tools for it, and it could be as simple as the social media maintainer posting twice
The official word of US government must be on government servers and platforms/sites or press channels. Use Twitter for promotional utility and reach, but not authority.
I am a citizen and I refuse to recognize Twitter as the voice of government.
If it's too hard to manage a simple website that serves the needs that X is filling, we need to address it in the web developer community. You shouldn't need a team of React experts to tell people it's a snow day, or post updates to changing SSA policy.
X is a commercial product which can become inaccessible based on login status, no? Do we really expect people to have to log in to view public information.
I cannot see where the article says they'll post a link to a PR, in fact it seems to say they will stop doing PRs altogether.
Did I misread?
/not a lawyer.
Where will you be viewing them, then?
Musk can do both for them, though.
I’ve always found it amusing how much world leaders actually use Twitter for communications. The fact that a private citizen can purchase the platform and do whatever they want with it is exactly why it’s a bad idea.
Not to mention this is a lame way to increase signups and AU metrics, holding a gun to an old person’s head.
That's exceptionally ageist. Looking at the analytics on some of our apps which trend towards an older audience it does not seem like they, as a class, have any particular difficulty in using digital platforms.
I also don't see how this is significantly different from their "dear colleague" letters which seem to be simply distributed on their website. I would not call this page a "better platform" for this information:
https://www.ssa.gov/news/advocates/#advocates2024
> On the call, Kerr-Davis sounded resigned as she relayed news of the changes. “I know this probably sounds very foreign to you. It did to me as well,” she said. “It’s not what we are used to, but we are in different times now.”
Yes. Expect change. In particular, use data driven decision making, and don't resist new communications technologies for parochial reasons.
That all being said, there was certainly a better way to do this, but the position that nothing should change or the audience is too old to use digital technologies is somewhat absurd. This would all be so much easier if Musk didn't have some reason to hamfistedly involve himself in government.
That guy so badly wants the world to commemorate a statue to him. I think we should just do it to shut him up for a while.
That page is public and accessible by anyone on the internet without an account. Not the case with Twitter.
Share posts on any social media forums, sure, but a data-driven decision would not put information EXCLUSIVELY on a private, shared, for-provite platform owned by an unelected government official. That's just corruption. It's pretty fucking simple.
A data-driven outcome would be "hey, we support hundreds of millions of people with different preferences and abilities, so we should probably use multiple platforms and ensure our information is as easy to access as possible." Which, btw, is not costly to do.
I view content on X without an account every day.
> would not put information EXCLUSIVELY on a private
That's where they're being released. Literally anyone can copy that to whatever platform they want. This is how "press releases" work in the first place. Is there some assumption that the general public is refreshing the press release page every day to be informed?
> Which, btw, is not costly to do.
Have you worked in government before?
How? I can see direct links, but I can't search or look at replies without an account.
I can see posts. You seem to have agreed to this.
Then you say there are additional features which are not available. I'm asking how those additional features are relevant to the problem? They don't seem relevant to the problem.
You also can't send DMs when logged in. Does this impact press releases from the SSA in some way? I get that it's not _fully featured_ but is that actually required for this _particular use case_?
Open incognito mode and go here: https://x.com/socialsecurity?lang=en
What exactly is not working for you?
[1] https://x.com/SocialSecurity/status/1909710597324964065
[2] https://xcancel.com/SocialSecurity/status/190971059732496406...
It makes very little sense to me to have that information's authoritative origin be on x, but I'm genuinely curious how this would be an improvement over the current situation where SSA publishes to their various web sites.
Perhaps you can explain why they should post stuff to X instead of either the CMS tied to the www site or the blog? After all "Literally anyone can copy that to whatever platform they want" so putting pushing things like that to various social media platforms has already been going on for a while.
What advantage are you seeing to have them switch from their current CMSs to x?
And how has that been?
> but I'm genuinely curious how this would be an improvement over the current situation where SSA publishes to their various web sites.
I didn't claim it would be an improvement. I claimed that it wouldn't actually make much difference. In particular invoking the "age" of the audience and imputing an inability to read anything other than these blogs is a red herring.
> Perhaps you can explain why they should post stuff to X instead of either the CMS tied to the www site or the blog?
So that they can downsize the communication staff from 700 people down to 50.
> After all "Literally anyone can copy that to whatever platform they want" so putting pushing things like that to various social media platforms has already been going on for a while.
Precisely. So why is defending the previous mechanism so important? Is the goal to inform the public or to have a nice CMS with tons of blogs in it? It's a nice feather in your cap but as a tax payer you can understand questioning it's ultimate value, can you not?
> What advantage are you seeing to have them switch from their current CMSs to x?
Less staff. It's hard for me to understand why 700 people were needed to maintain a blog that gets updated once a week.
If you want to be concerned with something you should have really paid more attention to how they're changing phone support and engaging in "anti-fraud" there. I think the lede has been intentionally buried with this outrage bait. These are _press releases_. It's the smallest part of the change and one that's likely to have minimal impact to outcomes.
"Less communications with customers, pushing the impact of changes onto support staff" is about the dumbest efficiency push anyone can make. Why do we now have to explain/defend the concept of why businesses make press release and that press releases are actual a useful thing? What is going on in this country?
Can you explain, in any shape or fashion how posting to X helps with this? Why not have a bare bones website that they can push whatever shit they were going to post on X? Why engage in blatant corruption and favoritism?
So you view the stuff that doesn't require an account - many want to see the stuff that does.