> BTW, I approached ABC about buying back the former FiveThirtyEight IP*, and they said they wouldn't sell at any price because I'd criticized their management of the brand.

--Nate Silver (538 founder)

ABC seem pretty petty here.

• rurp

  today at 7:56 PM

  Wow. I have a low opinion of ABC as I said in another post, but this level of pettiness is still surprising to me.

  • brookst

    today at 8:00 PM

    It’s basically a fuck you to the shareholders. Hey we’ve got this dead asset someone will pay for but we won’t sell because they were mean to us.

    Any exec who operates that way should be shown the door ASAP as they are likely doing similar emotional management of other aspects of the business.

    • SoftTalker

      today at 8:29 PM

      If they feel it's damaging to have it public, then it could be argued that selling it would be irresponsible. I'm not arguing it is or it isn't, but reputation has value and management of it is part of what shareholders expect.

    • jfengel

      today at 8:39 PM

      ABC's shareholders are Disney. Whatever Nate offered them isn't even a rounding error in Disney's $36 billion dollars in profits last year. The shareholders aren't going to care.

      • hibikir

        today at 8:57 PM

        It's not that a shareholder won't care, but that the modern US company is such a large basket of businesses, it's impossible to put any pressure on a random business unit throwing money away. So, in practice, there's very little pressure to do things right, and a lot of pressure to do what your boss prefers, whether it actually helps the company's profitability or not. There can be negatives if you are doing massive damage to the company's image, but even then, ABC has done more than a little bit of that over the last couple of years to no ill effects. Just ask Kimmel.

      • themafia

        today at 9:11 PM

        > shareholders are Disney

        Who's shareholders are the public.

        > The shareholders aren't going to care

        This is not a valid defense in court. You can't let "attitude of investors" override "sound financial decisionmaking."

        • slipheen

          today at 9:20 PM

          I'm not defending them or this behaviour but it sounds to me like they may think the message/threat this sends to silence future criticism from other people, outweighs the immediate sum.

          (Internally I'm sure they could probably phrase it some other less negative way such as chance of people confusing the brand as still owned by them, etc) association

      • lotsofpulp

        today at 8:59 PM

        Disney's 2025 profit was $12B:

        https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/DIS/disney/net-inc...

        • themafia

          today at 9:13 PM

          So what amount of profits insulates you from lack of fiduciary responsibility?

          "It's okay set millions of dollars on fire because we have billions in this pile over here!"

          • singleshot_

            today at 10:00 PM

            No, what insulates them from fiduciary responsibility is the fact that there is no fiduciary responsibility to shareholders. I’ll say that again: members and/or managers of an LLC, and officers and directors of a corporation owe no fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders to make them money. The fiduciary duties owed under US law are as follows: 1) the duty to be informed; 2) the duty not to usurp corporate opportunities.

            As far as I can tell the fiduciary duty to make money for the shareholders is something that Jack Welsh of GE said enough times that people remembered it. However, I’m always interested in additional details concerning the history of this meme, and happy to learn more.

            • mminer237

              today at 10:25 PM

              This is true in some states, like Texas; but not in Delaware where Disney is incorporated and where directors and officers owe fiduciary duties of care and loyalty to both the corporation and the shareholders.

              (Not legal advice. I'm not licensed in either state.)

            • singleshot_

              today at 10:02 PM

              (The first person to observe that an LLC has no shareholders gets a lawyer high five).

• eugenekolo

  today at 8:05 PM

  WOuldn't proof of that be some grounds for breach of fiduciary duty?

  • tptacek

    today at 8:31 PM

    No. People have weird beliefs about what fiduciary duty means. It does not mean that companies are required at all intervals to maximize revenue or profit.

  • jvanderbot

    today at 8:18 PM

    Dunno - is protecting yourself from high-profile criticism by doing whatever you want with assets you 100% own and are under no contractual obligation to share ... also in fiduciary duty?

  • minimaxir

    today at 8:27 PM

    It is not illegal to be petty during business negotiations.

  • 8note

    today at 9:05 PM

    the easy argument otherwise would be that if they sold the IP, they wouldnt be able to revive it in the future, and also they would have nate silver as a competitor in the space

  • nradov

    today at 8:17 PM

    Nope. There is really no case law to support such a legal theory.

• TurdF3rguson

  today at 10:01 PM

  Just register fivethirtynine.com and don't look back.

• today at 8:20 PM

It's wild to me how often I see corporate America both: 1. Spend immense amounts trying to build and improve a brand. 2. Toss well known brands aside as if they are useless.

Not that it's always the same company doing both at the same time, but it's crazy 538 was just left to die. It was a very recognizable brand among wonky professionals, a very desirable customer base. It's not as if politics and sports have gotten less relevant in the world over the past decade. ABC's decision to toss this aside is baffling.

Much of the 538 alumni seem to be doing well, either independently or as part of a major organization, so I don't think much was lost overall. But I sure empathize with the folks who lost their dream job and ABC looks pretty bad for frittering away a successful business for seemingly no reason. Taking down these articles is nonsensical.

• keeganpoppen

  today at 8:03 PM

  this is what the salesforces of the world do to startups every day. it is so painful to watch. billions upon billions wasted for just the stupidest possible reasons.

  • forlorn_mammoth

    today at 8:27 PM

    at least they aren't inefficient, like governments are. Because as you can clearly see market forces always lead to optimal resource allocations.

    • msie

      today at 8:47 PM

      Like the billions invested in AI???

      • hungryhobbit

        today at 9:31 PM

        Pretty sure forlorn_mammoth had an implied /s in their post.

        • bayindirh

          today at 9:36 PM

          Hope so.

  • herpdyderp

    today at 8:49 PM

    On the other hand, it's nice for the people receiving those paychecks (at least while they're still receiving them).

Really sad to see some of the best visualizations I've ever seen in my life being taken down. I've easily spent hours exploring playing with their gun deaths visualization, p-hacking piece, gut microbiome explorable explainer and many others.

Guess we better back up their GitHub repos before that gets taken down as well

https://github.com/fivethirtyeight

• The_Blade

  today at 9:51 PM

  they took down the burrito bracket, it must be resurrected

  when i lived in SF i found al pastor at Tacqueria Cancun messianic

538 was fun while it lasted. The podcasts were also a good listen.

Things got worse after Disney had their first round of layoffs. Their problem was they weren't profitable outside the presidential election years when interest peaked in the general public. 3 out of 4 years only diehard election polling wonks tuned in.

If they shut it down, then it's just a strategic decision.

If Nate Silver buys it back (for pennies on the dollar) and then makes it successful, it's embarrassing and makes ABC look bad at business.

• rurp

  today at 8:58 PM

  That's kind of already happened though. Nate and Galen have both launched Substack's covering much of what they did at 538. I've also seen at least 4-5 others working elsewhere doing the similar polling/politics/sports work.

  Maybe that was the logic on ABC's part but it's ridiculously wrong given how much clear market demand there is for the 538 people and content.

  • bsder

    today at 9:50 PM

    > That's kind of already happened though.

    It's a world of difference to the political standing of the ABC Vice President between "Nate Silver launched something and made a gazillion dollars" vs "Nate Silver bought FiveThirtyEight back for a song and made a gazillion dollars" even if Nate Silver did the exact same thing. In the second case, the ABC Vice President gets fired because he signed off on the purchase.

    This is why long copyright is such a terrible idea. With long copyright, there is every incentive to sit on IP and do nothing with it because of political losses. With short copyright, the incentive is to do something quick because the copyright will expire otherwise.

If you sell out don't expect to control future events.

• sharts

  today at 9:58 PM

  Fax. It’s amazing how many “leaders” fail to see that in exchange for the payout.

• Lerc

  today at 8:34 PM

  Fair enough, but you can still observe and make comments about them.

Tangential: I miss Nate and Maria Konnikova's Risky Business podcast. It only lasted a year (or two?).

I expected it would be resurrected outside the Pushkin network, but hasn't happened yet.

What I _don't_ miss is listening to podcasts on Pushkin. I had nothing against Malcolm Gladwell, but something about having his voice on every one of the network's very numerous ads became incredibly grating.

• rurp

  today at 9:02 PM

  I enjoyed the old 538 podcast and usually like Nate's work but didn't care at all about Risky Business. His cohost was terrible in the episodes I listened too. She managed to do a lot of talking without saying anything interesting or insightful.

  Gladwell also annoys me, so that didn't help matters.

I don't understand why Nate doesn't just start SixFortyNine and does it all over again. In the end, what ABC owns is just a name - which was always kinda stupid and even hard to spell - and a bunch of obsolete content.

• daniel-thompson

  today at 8:52 PM

  https://www.natesilver.net/

  i was a casual reader of 538 back in the day. his substack feels pretty similar, if smaller in scope.

Major news sites can just lean into mathwashing their political opinions pages and call it any random number they like.

How did they do that? How do you lose access to your own website?

• cobertos

  today at 10:13 PM

  They sold it a while ago

But why?

• markoman

  today at 7:32 PM

  Nate Silver has some pretty good commentary on it all on his X account (https://x.com/NateSilver538).

  • hightrix

    today at 7:39 PM

    A link for those of us without twitter accounts.

    https://xcancel.com/NateSilver538

• cmsparks

  today at 7:26 PM

  No idea. ABC bought it and slowly has been shutting down the parts of it. They got rid of the projects page, then laid off all the folks working on it after the election, and now have gotten rid of all of the articles.

  Fortunately the Github is still up: https://github.com/fivethirtyeight

  • fn-mote

    today at 7:33 PM

    > Fortunately the Github is still up

    I need to mirror everything to keep it accessible when they decide to shut this down, too?

    I loved that site, and referred people to it frequently.

  • today at 7:32 PM

• BeetleB

  today at 7:43 PM

  I'm surprised this is news - or perhaps just surprised that there was still some of 538 around ...?

  ABC officially sunset 538 over a year ago (and laid off most/all of the staff).

Was 538 ABC's property during the first Trump election? IIRC they took a pretty big credibility hit after getting that election so wrong and never really recovered.

• applfanboysbgon

  today at 10:09 PM

  > pretty big credibility hit after getting that election so wrong

  That this is the narrative that survived the election is one of the greatest indictments for our society's ability to engage in critical thinking.

  The day before the election, the Huffington Post published a hit piece criticising Nate for overrating Trump's odds and inspiring panic. Huffpost predicted a 98.2% chance of Clinton winning, NYT predicted 85%, and Nate's model dared to give her only a 65% chance of winning.

  Then the election happens, Trump wins, and the credible figure who gave him the highest odds is now lambasted from the other direction. He was so wrong to give Trump a chance that the mainstream media were publishing articles about it, and he was so wrong to not give Trump a 100% chance that it ruined his reputation. The moral: you literally can't win, because people are too fucking stupid to comprehend probability, period.

  538 made thousands of forecasts of events they predicted to happen 30% of the time, and those events happened 29% of the time in actuality. Does that mean they got it wrong every single one of those times a 30% event actually happened? For a forecaster to be 'correct', is it necessary for events forecasted at 30% to never happen?

• shipman05

  today at 9:37 PM

  I remember that whole election starting off very poorly for Nate Silver.

  After reading this book, The Party Decides https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo592160... , he was a big advocate of the idea that the "endorsement race" of state officials and unelected party leaders.

  There was a whole "Party Decides: Endorsement Tracker" graphic and everything, but Trump securing the Republican nomination and eventually the presidency pretty conclusively showed that theory to be a relic of the past.

  So the 538 election coverage that year was: - Party endorsements matter more than early polling (they didn't) - Hillary's up so big there's no way Trump can win (he did, and yes I know they didn't actually say that but that's what the layman saw)

  (ironically the Party Decides thesis seems to have correctly predicted events in the Democratic primary that year)

  • bombcar

    today at 10:05 PM

    IIRC Nate Silver (or Bronze as the kids called him) was the only poll aggregator to even give Trump "a chance", but he really went overboard afterwards arguing that he got "it right" even though clearly he was wrong.

ABC has opted to step on Thucydides Trap.

Oh NO, that's probably the best infographic news sites I was keep visiting and learn

• BeetleB

  today at 7:41 PM

  538 was sunset over a year ago.

  • today at 9:01 PM

538 had a really accessible portal that evaluated the quality of pollsters. It made it very easy to know which polls were low-quality and therefore ignorable. It being an election year, it’s possible someone didn’t like their pollster rating. Thankfully, we still have Internet Archive.

Edit: nm it was definitely the burrito battle royale bracket. Big burrito couldn’t handle the truth being revealed about their restaurants.

Nate Silver - the guy who pushed so, so hard for Hillary during the 2016 election.

The old school press people before the 80s would be horrified at this.

All this proves is when the press was deregulated to allow one person to own all the media they can afford brought us were we are now.

• flomo

  today at 8:00 PM

  No. The 'old school' hated 538 and polling wonks in general. Back in the 2000s there was a huge push back because this blog guy had numbers going against whatever narrative they were trying spin.

• lotsofpulp

  today at 7:57 PM

  I feel like it proves the opposite. A small entity was able to become a valued source of information, a big entity bought it, but then was unable to do anything with it, since being a “big” media seller does not matter due to the accessibility of the internet.

[flagged]

This makes no sense. Sure, he got nearly every prediction wrong but so have their meteorologists. Why just pick on poor ol' Nate?

• MostlyStable

  today at 7:54 PM

  Yeah they sure were bad at predictions. If only they had aggregated all their predictions and compared them to how things actually turned out in one easy assess location. That sure would have been useful..... [0]

  [0] https://web.archive.org/web/20250306183754/https://projects....

• cmsparks

  today at 7:39 PM

  538 was actually pretty accurate!

  They had a good article about how their predictions were much better than you'd expect, but obviously I can't link it anymore because ABC removed it.

• darkarmani

  today at 9:53 PM

  Did he predict odds? How are you so sure his odds were wrong?

• fabian2k

  today at 7:50 PM

  The 70:30 prediction against Trump was far better than most. I did see models back then that considered the state polls mostly or entirely uncorrelated, and those produced obviously garbage with 90% or even 99% in favor of Clinton.

  But in the end people pick on Nate because he really enjoys being an asshole on the internet. It's far more about when he acts as a pundit, not as an expert on statistics.

  • softwaredoug

    today at 7:53 PM

    People consistently have a hard time understanding that 30% probabilities happen all the time.

    • triceratops

      today at 8:06 PM

      Surely not all the time.

      • BobaFloutist

        today at 9:36 PM

        I think given the number of things that can happen with ~30% probability, there's probably something significant happening with ~30% probability at basically all times.

      • Lerc

        today at 8:43 PM

        30% of the time it is all of the time.

      • AnimalMuppet

        today at 10:01 PM

        Well, we're talking about elections. You have an election where there's a president, 30 or so governors, 33-34 senators, and 438 representatives. Say a total of 64 major offices, or 500 if you count the representatives. You'd expect a 30% chance to happen in 19 major races, or 150 races if you count the representatives.

        So in an election, that happens all the time. It just doesn't always happen in the race for president.

    • Yossarrian22

      today at 8:04 PM

      Some say 30% of the time.

    • krapp

      today at 8:21 PM

      Where Presidential politics is concerned, I think it's less a case of misunderstanding probabilities and more the success of party propaganda. Every victory is a landslide with a resounding mandate from the populace, every defeat a crushing humiliation and repudiation of your opponent's Unamerican ideals.

  • bigfishrunning

    today at 9:04 PM

    I kind of fell off the Nate Silver train toward the end of Trump's first term (so deep in the COVID-19 era...). It feels like around that time 538 shifted heavily away from raw statistics and into punditry, and they seemed less unique among the various political blogs.

  • add-sub-mul-div

    today at 8:22 PM

    Those predictions all became worthless anyway when Comey reopened the "emails" issue right before the election and threw fresh meat to all the stupid people who ate that up.

• BeetleB

  today at 7:41 PM

  This isn't about Nate's articles (although perhaps those are gone as well).

• redsocksfan45

  today at 7:53 PM

  [dead]