The Walt Disney Company has permanently shuttered the FiveThirtyEight website, resulting in the loss of a decade’s worth of data journalism and approximately 200,000 hours of editorial work.

Key Points

• Disney officially closed the FiveThirtyEight website in March 2025, redirecting all traffic to the ABC News homepage.
• Founder Nate Silver estimates the site’s decade-long Disney tenure produced roughly 200,000 person-hours of content that is no longer accessible.
• Silver claims Disney repeatedly rejected proposals to implement a subscription model, which he believes could have generated millions in annual revenue.
• The site’s decline followed years of staff reductions and the 2023 departure of Silver, whose contract was not renewed.
• Silver attempted to purchase the remaining intellectual property and archives from Disney, but the company declined to negotiate.

Why it Matters

The disappearance of FiveThirtyEight highlights the growing issue of "link rot" and the vulnerability of digital archives owned by large corporations. This case serves as a cautionary example of how institutional neglect can erase significant cultural and intellectual contributions when a brand is treated as a non-core asset.