Summary

The Social Security Administration (SSA) is investigating recent outages on its “My Social Security” website, which blocked millions from accessing benefits.

The crashes follow policy changes shifting retirees online and reducing phone support. Elon Musk has been monkeying with America’s retirement system, with no positive results so far.

Musk falsely claimed 40% of SSA calls are fraudulent, fueling criticism. While SSA denies permanent office closures, it admitted to downsizing certain sites.

    • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      7 hours ago

      Probably applies to most of the private sector, too. A startup company only dealing with “social media” can afford to have failure, at least in the early days…but adults doing adult things where “breaking things” has real consequences, including lives…not so much.

      But a whole lot of ding-a-lings think government should be run like a business, and if the stupid notion of “moving fast and breaking things” has infected a lot of the private sector, it’s going to have knock-on effects when people try to apply the notion that the President should be just like a CEO at a large multinational corporation. A lot of stupid ideas originate with trying to run government like a business and/or like a household budget.

      • HubertManne@piefed.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        6 hours ago

        I agree whole hardheadedly. Felt like my last company was like that which was funny because they were also ultra paranoid with security which seemed like a conflicting thing.

    • greenfire@lemmings.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      31
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      Move fast & kill Granny before she bankrupts the US government by taking her Social Security payments /s

      • chaogomu@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        18
        ·
        1 day ago

        Except Social Security is not in danger of bankrupting the government. Sort of.

        See, Republicans have been raiding Social Security for petty cash for decades so that they could give rich assholes another tax break and still fund their endless wars.

        But that money needs to go back. Whenever some asshole says that Social Security is x amount short, that’s money that’s owed to the American people,

        • Buelldozer@lemmy.today
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          2
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 day ago

          See, Republicans have been raiding Social Security for petty cash for decades…

          That’s a popular opinion but it’s not supported by any reputable source I can find.

          Here’s USA Today.

          Here’s Politifact.

          “Fixing” Social Security can be done pretty simple by just raising the taxable income limit. That could be done at any time but of course Congress is about as useful as wet toilet paper so nothing will happen until it’s a pants on fire emergency.

          • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            1 day ago

            The fact that if you’re rich, you stop paying social security tax is insane. I hit it one year and was like why did I get a big bump in my take home? I absolutely did not need the extra cash.

      • Fredselfish@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        1 day ago

        My dad a trump lover said we should end social security altogether. Which fucking funny for someone who has never paid in.

  • dryfter@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    37
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    1 day ago

    Sorry, it was me. I’ve been F5ing the hell out of their website because my payment date keeps changing. I technically should have seen my monthly disability check deposited today…surprise, it’s not there yet 🤨🫠🤬

    • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 day ago

      I’m in a similar boat as you.

      Got my routine 6-7 year CDR packet in the mail… took me 2 weeks of off and on trying to access the site last month to input and submit all the information digitally … as sending it through snail mail would probably be too slow (10 ish days), I don’t have a car and am mobility challeneged.

      Now I’m trying to call my local office to make sure they actually got everything but uh wow big surprise, that ain’t going well either.

      … At least I did get my payment direct deposited.

  • Rhaedas@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    31
    ·
    1 day ago

    Hope he gets cornered in an alley by a bunch of retirees. And has a quiet discussion about the damage he’s doing.

    • jaybone@lemmy.zip
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      1 day ago

      Maybe some retired veterans with nice coin collections would like to meet up with him and show him how their coins work.

    • abdominable@lemm.ee
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      17
      ·
      1 day ago

      Twitter servers were a benchmark in global performance up until he started fucking around with them. They were included on latency tests. The second he touched them latency tripled. Never went back down. He turned Twitter from a tech company leader into a social propaganda network worth a fraction of itself.