Disney kills the 538 archives without explanation
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Another reminder about how fragile web-based archives are:
An archived website of FiveThirtyEight, a data journalism publication known for its polling analysis and election models, is now redirecting readers to ABC News, its owner and former host. As a result, many thousands of articles stretching back to FiveThirtyEight’s founding in 2008 are no longer accessible online, according to Nathaniel Rakich, a former senior staff editor at the publication.
ABC shut down FiveThirtyEight, which was founded by the election analyst and forecaster Nate Silver and specialized in data-driven analyses of elections, sports and other subjects, in March 2025. But an earlier stand-alone version of the publication, fivethirtyeight.com — discontinued in 2023, when FiveThirtyEight merged with ABCNews.com — had been archived and remained accessible online.
It is not clear why or precisely when the content was removed, though comments about a lack of access began appearing online on Friday morning. ABC News declined multiple requests for comment.
A vast majority of fivethirtyeight.com is no longer available; users who attempt to navigate to the site are now redirected to the political news page of ABC News. The only portion of the old site that still appeared to be accessible on Saturday was data.fivethirtyeight.com, which is meant to offer access to the data and code underlying the publication’s work. Many of the relevant links, however, were redirecting users to ABC News.
Nate believes that this was done out of pique at some mild criticism, and given their failure to offer an alternative explanation (or indeed any explanation at all) this seems highly likely:
It’s not even a general cleaning of the archives — they still have ancient editions of America’s most notoriously useless political newsletter up, for example:
And apparently they barely survived the first leadership transition:
When I was at ABC I had to rally the 538 team to threaten to quit as leverage to have the old website archived instead of taken down. Not surprising they did this now, after all the real journalists on the digital side of the org have been laid off or left www.nytimes.com/2026/05/16/b…
[image or embed]— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris.com) 3:40 PM · May 17, 2026
The archived 538 site didn’t cost anything significant to keep online. I saw the contracts. There’s just nobody in charge there anymore who has a commitment to journalistic ethics that overrides their desire for their December bonus check— G Elliott Morris (@gelliottmorris.com) 4:16 PM · May 17, 2026
The barbarians being in charge of the virtual library is going to end badly in many, many cases.