> 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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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.
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.
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.
37 comments:
> 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.
Wow. I have a low opinion of ABC as I said in another post, but this level of pettiness is still surprising to me.
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.
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.
WOuldn't proof of that be some grounds for breach of fiduciary duty?
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?
It is not illegal to be petty during business negotiations.
Nope. There is really no case law to support such a legal theory.
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.
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.
at least they aren't inefficient, like governments are. Because as you can clearly see market forces always lead to optimal resource allocations.
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.
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 you sell out don't expect to control future events.
But why?
Nate Silver has some pretty good commentary on it all on his X account (https://x.com/NateSilver538).
A link for those of us without twitter accounts.
https://xcancel.com/NateSilver538
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
> 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.
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).
Oh NO, that's probably the best infographic news sites I was keep visiting and learn
538 was sunset over a year ago.
ABC has opted to step on Thucydides Trap.
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.
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.
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.
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.
This makes no sense. Sure, he got nearly every prediction wrong but so have their meteorologists. Why just pick on poor ol' Nate?
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....
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.
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.
People consistently have a hard time understanding that 30% probabilities happen all the time.
Some say 30% of the time.
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.
Surely not all the time.
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.
This isn't about Nate's articles (although perhaps those are gone as well).