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Who killed the state start-up Mes-aides? This article recounts a story behind the scenes of the modernization of the French State, about a death with neither guilt nor bloodshed: the story of the grandiose rise and fall of an unprecedented form of digital governmentality, called “beta governmentality”, based on an online social rights simulator. For over five years this technical object, which might seem boring and of little political import, was the subject of an unprecedented dispute between those who were modernizing the State and those in charge of social policies, over the means and ends of the fight against the non-take-up of social rights and benefits. Following an inquiry into the design of the application, the author suggests that this failure should be seen in light of the timing of public policy measures and of a divergence in the degree of clarity of the administrative enunciation, which helps to clarify some of the difficulties involved in modernizing the State.