Thousands of FiveThirtyEight Articles Seemingly Vanish From the Internet

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of the publication, fivethirtyeight.com — discontinued in 2023, when FiveThirtyEight merged with ABCNews.com — had been archived and remained accessible online.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.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/16/business/media/fivethirtyeight-abc-removed.html