Social Security Says On X It’s Not Switching All Communications To X (Update)

The agency batted down a Wired report that it was moving all of its communications to X … with a post on X.

The Social Security Administration hasn’t posted a press release on its website since March 27 after having put out releases nearly every day for the previous month.

What gives?

According to a report in Wired, the agency is shifting communications to X, the social media platform owned by Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and the person President Donald Trump put in charge of seeking “efficiency” at federal agencies.

“We are no longer planning to issue press releases or those dear colleague letters to inform the media and public about programmatic and service changes,” an SSA regional commissioner announced during an internal meeting this week, according to Wired’s sources.

Social Security spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment from HuffPost. Hours later, the agency responded to the Wired report with a post on X: “This is false. Social Security will continue to communicate through any and all mediums.”

As of Friday night, it still had not posted anything new on its press release site.

In recent weeks, queries to the SSA press line have produced responses from White House spokespeople instead of Social Security spokespeople.

For example, this week the White House confirmed to HuffPost and other outlets Social Security would no longer implement a massive change to phone service that had been scheduled to take effect next week. The change, driven by Musk’s team, had been intended to block fraudulent activity carried out over the phone. It would have required millions of seniors to show themselves at Social Security field offices, instead of just calling in, if they were unable to apply for benefits through SSA.gov.

The agency failed to announce that change on X. Instead, it posted a cryptic message that might have made people think the original phone service cutback was still happening.

“Beginning on April 14, #SocialSecurity will perform an anti-fraud check on all claims filed over the telephone and flag claims that have fraud risk indicators,” the message said. In another post the next day, Social Security said phone users “will only have to come in-person if they are flagged by our anti-fraud system.”

Here’s how a White House official explained what was going on in an email to HuffPost: “Beginning on April 14, SSA will allow all claim types to be completed over the telephone.” In other words, no actual change would take effect.

The phone service change had originally been announced in a press release on SSA.gov. When it postponed the rollout for two weeks, to the 14th, because it was a significant alteration to agency operations and nobody was ready, the agency announced the delay in another press release. There’s no press release telling people they won’t have to drive to their nearest field office if they can’t use the Social Security website.

More than 70 million retired and disabled Americans receive monthly Social Security benefits, with several million more enrolling every year.