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Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

natesilver.net

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Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#31

Post by ninth_ant »

> I did too much bragging in the media and didn’t anticipate the extent to which public opinion toward FiveThirtyEight would shift once we became a corporate-backed incumbent rather than an eccentric upstart

Can’t speak for everyone else, but it wasn’t this for me. It was about 2016 presidential that lost me.

He tries to justify this later about how theirs was better than other outlets but I don’t care. Call it emotional, naive, unfair or whatever you want, but regardless I had zero interest in reading any of their predictions or analyses after that.

Not even mad, just that to my experience they had one job and they didn’t fulfill it at the most important time. They went from appearing insightful to just one opinion amongst so many others.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#32

Post by outside1234 »

simonw wrote: post #25

In situations like this I always wonder if there's a decision maker somewhere in the pipeline who just has values and a mental model of the world that's entirely foreign to me - for whom the idea of deleting a decade+ of content from the web doesn't strike them as bad in the slightest.

I would actually say that for most business people this is all "about numbers" and aren't in the slightest worried about deleting something.

This is why efforts like Internet Archive and others are so important. Whatever you think of 538, it _is_ history, and in this digital world it needs to be preserved.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#33

Post by forshaper »

legitster wrote: post #28

> The thinking at Disney is presumably that they invested a lot of money in FiveThirtyEight and were left with nothing to show for it. But to my mind, however much they spent on FiveThirtyEight, they never invested a dollar in it. There was never really any effort, or even any pretense of trying, to make it a profitable unit of the company. At one point, other senior staffers and I basically begged Disney to turn on…

Insulation in our society has gone all the way up and down.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#34

Post by shawabawa3 »

ninth_ant wrote: post #31

> I did too much bragging in the media and didn’t anticipate the extent to which public opinion toward FiveThirtyEight would shift once we became a corporate-backed incumbent rather than an eccentric upstart Can’t speak for everyone else, but it wasn’t this for me. It was about 2016 presidential that lost me. He tries to justify this later about how theirs was better than other outlets but I don’t care. Call it emoti…

Because they said trump only had a 30% chance to win?

What if they had said 49%? Would that have made their prediction worthless?

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#35

Post by laweijfmvo »

armchairhacker wrote: post #27
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe this has to do with the leftward trend of the mainstream press. What mainstream press outlet has moved leftwards? I can't think of any, and I certainly am interested in knowing which those might be. Inversely, cbs, the ny times, and the washington post have all shifted rather noticeably rightward in the last 10 years.

According to AllSides, many outlets moved left, although some did move right: https://www.allsides.com/blog/AllSides-Media-Bias-Rating-Ove... It and https://mediabiasfactcheck.com say NYTimes “leans left” and is “left-center” respectively. What’s an example that you believe highlights NYTimes moving rightward?

you should scroll through AllSides' twitter before trusting them to be impartial.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#36

Post by fabian2k »

ninth_ant wrote: post #31

> I did too much bragging in the media and didn’t anticipate the extent to which public opinion toward FiveThirtyEight would shift once we became a corporate-backed incumbent rather than an eccentric upstart Can’t speak for everyone else, but it wasn’t this for me. It was about 2016 presidential that lost me. He tries to justify this later about how theirs was better than other outlets but I don’t care. Call it emoti…

FiveThirtyEight gave Trump a 30% chance. Their reporting did make clear that with margin was within the range of a normal polling error. And sometimes you get more than a normal polling error.

It doesn't help that the US has a terrible election system that often leads to small margins in some states being decisive.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#37

Post by bellowsgulch »

shawabawa3 wrote: post #34
ninth_ant wrote: post #31

> I did too much bragging in the media and didn’t anticipate the extent to which public opinion toward FiveThirtyEight would shift once we became a corporate-backed incumbent rather than an eccentric upstart Can’t speak for everyone else, but it wasn’t this for me. It was about 2016 presidential that lost me. He tries to justify this later about how theirs was better than other outlets but I don’t care. Call it emoti…

Because they said trump only had a 30% chance to win? What if they had said 49%? Would that have made their prediction worthless?

I mean everyone said he had a snowball’s chance in hell and then we ended up with him for two terms because the Democrats can’t stop fighting over the worse possible candidates to back that no one is asking for.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#38

Post by rurp »

ninth_ant wrote: post #31

> I did too much bragging in the media and didn’t anticipate the extent to which public opinion toward FiveThirtyEight would shift once we became a corporate-backed incumbent rather than an eccentric upstart Can’t speak for everyone else, but it wasn’t this for me. It was about 2016 presidential that lost me. He tries to justify this later about how theirs was better than other outlets but I don’t care. Call it emoti…

I had complaints about 538, especially the early days, but don't understand this critique at all. A 30% chance hitting is completely unremarkable, and it was a perfectly reasonable reading of the evidence at the time. Nate isn't wrong that conventional wisdom was way off, with even supposedly statistical models giving Hillary a 99% chance of winning.

Elections, like many things, have some inherent uncertainty. A several point polling error is normal, so a candidate who is down a couple points on election day has a decent shot of winning.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#39

Post by jcranmer »

armchairhacker wrote: post #27
Octoth0rpe wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe this has to do with the leftward trend of the mainstream press. What mainstream press outlet has moved leftwards? I can't think of any, and I certainly am interested in knowing which those might be. Inversely, cbs, the ny times, and the washington post have all shifted rather noticeably rightward in the last 10 years.

According to AllSides, many outlets moved left, although some did move right: https://www.allsides.com/blog/AllSides-Media-Bias-Rating-Ove... It and https://mediabiasfactcheck.com say NYTimes “leans left” and is “left-center” respectively. What’s an example that you believe highlights NYTimes moving rightward?

> What’s an example that you believe highlights NYTimes moving rightward?

Look at their coverage of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's response to a question about Taiwan versus Trump's response to a question about Taiwan. In the first case, their quote included all of the um's and other similar pauses in answering the question. In the second case, their quote of Trump cleaned up all of those artifacts. The end result is that it looks like AOC is flailing to come up with an answer while Trump has a clean, polished answer. But if you compare the actual audio clips of both answers, Trump's answer is the one that involves far more flailing to come up with a response.

There is a general pattern in the more subtle aspects of presentation and framing that generally excuse the behaviors of right-wing politicians compared to the same actions being done by a left-wing politician.

Re: Disney erased FiveThirtyEight

#40

Post by mholm »

SilverElfin wrote: post #29
superfrank wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How so? To me it seems like the exact opposite of what's happened with Star Wars in the last 20 years. 538 was purchased and then left to wither and die where as Disney seems intent on squeezing every last penny from the Star Wars franchise by using the IP as much as possible

Disney removed a lot of the earlier IP from the official Star Wars storyline shortly after acquiring it. That IP was much better than the complete mess and politicization of Star Wars that happened in the sequels. Sure they are trying to squeeze money out of it - and maybe some of the TV shows are tolerable - but they killed the brand and its best content in the process.

Content quality and content monetization are very different. The EU had exceptionally low monetization and brand recognition.
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