Comment by aredox 3 days ago
If they have the ability to change data, then absolutely none of their claims can be trusted. Neither Musk nor his A-team of hackers have demonstrated any integrity through their career - contrary to HN guidelines, the default position is to assume the worst from them.
Think about it once they begin putting the opposition on show trials.
This talking point keeps blowing my mind.
They occasionally make minor mistakes! If only voters had known that occasionally minor mistakes (in reporting of all places) might be made, they'd have insisted we stick with the bureaucracy they know and love!
But hey, I guess it at least did happen. It's better than the grasping-at-straws "they'll probably leak your SS number" talking point. And the "he'll redirect treasury payments to himself" talking point.
This is inaccurate. In September 2022, the agency contracting officer mistakenly wrote $8B instead of $8M when logging in the FPDS database. DOGE discovered this error in January 2025, and the agency updated FPDS accordingly.
Except DOGE (at the time of this article) kept their claim of saving $8B and pointed at the old contract to make their stats look better.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/18/upshot/doge-contracts-mus...
The DOGE website initially included a screenshot from the federal contracting database showing that the contract’s value was $8 million, even as the DOGE site listed $8 billion in savings. On Tuesday night, around the time this article was published, DOGE removed the screenshot that showed the mismatch, but continued to claim $8 billion in savings. It added a link to the original, outdated version of the contract worth $8 billion.
Trustworthy and transparent. I guess fixing a typo is worth $8B?
"By examining past versions of the contract listed on the Federal Procurement Data System, The Upshot determined that the federal award, approved in September 2022, had initially listed a total value of $8 billion. But on Jan. 22 this year, that figure was updated to $8 million...
It's possible that DOGE or someone else in the Trump administration can claim credit for fixing the error in the contracting database, given that the value was downgraded to $8 million two days after President Trump took office. "
-NYT TFA
So Bureaucracy incompetence, mistake is around for >2 years, DOGE fixes it.
Screenshot and FPDS DB were out of sync, "PDS posting of the final termination notices can have up to a 1-month lag."
No, the DOGE website scrapes from the FPDS DB. The DB wasn't updated immediately. Like I quoted in an adjacent comment "PDS posting of the final termination notices can have up to a 1-month lag."
Your bias is blinding you to what is the obvious explanation that I'm sure you'd recognize if you saw it on a non-political website.
I just want to point out one more thing: DOGE didn't advertise this 8M savings anywhere, there wasn't a speech about it etc. This was found on https://doge.gov/savings
Your comment is vague so it's not clear if you are accusing voters in general of uncrtitically accepting obvious propaganda or if you yourself have believed obvious propaganda generated by DOGE.
Now that they can edit data, nothing can be proven, as they broke the chain of trust and accountability.
A criminal case can be thrown out if policemen didn't follow procedure, the same applies here. Those rules are put in place to protect all of us, and can't be handwaved because "that guy got elected" (with 49.8% of popular votes BTW).
The distinction between whether or not someone is formally registered as dead and whether or if they receive money are two completely different things and should not be confused. If you conflate the two issues then you can only be being disingenuous.
I've worked at a company which had people who have been dead longer than America exists in their database and some of them do not have a recorded date of death. That does not mean they are not dead, just that the death was not confirmed. And no they weren't being paid.
However if you get some junior developer in with no real knowledge of what they are doing on the job, stuff like this will appear and you can use it for political collateral because no one cares enough to understand the problem and ask questions. Like yourself.
No 300 year old pensionier got a paycheck. There was an audit just a few years back which didn't find big/relevant issues.
The USA Gov is not completly brain dead.
And no 'people didn't vote for this'. 1. only about 60-70% of people voted and from them around 50% voted for Trump.
The question is still valid if this should allow the current gov to overhaul the whole system that agressivly.
A gov and the people depending on it, are not tech bros who can afford to get fired.
Musk/Trump is already responsible for real death alone through the way they cut USAID: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/climate-and-people...
There is a 'okayisch' way to stop everything (its the USA choice if the most powerful and richest country is no longer able or motivated to help around the globe despite the damage a country like the USA does around the globe, think co2, resources etc.) and there is the Musk/Trump way and no this is not okay at all. Its a breach of social contract, respect etc.
their claims can't be trusted because they fail at basic accounting and reading. Something something malice incompetence.
https://twitter.com/electricfutures/status/18918983362081056...
> The single biggest ticket item is a DHS contract listed as saving $8 billion. Wow, that's a huge contract! Actually no, it's $8 million. They must have tried to automate scraping the FPDS form and failed.