Donald Trump Doesn’t Want Your Opinion On The Media… Just Your Money.

I was chatting with a web developer friend earlier this evening, and he stops in the middle of the conversation. “Hey, you know that Media Accountability Survey the GOP is hawking? It’s a fraud.”

I’m not surprised by the statement, but my friend isn’t given to hyperbole. “How do you mean?”

“The thing only exists to raise money for the party coffers. No one sees the polling data, because it’s never sent.”

After I stop laughing, I ask him to explain it to me. I’m technically inclined, but I have a feeling I’ll need Cliff’s Notes for this one.

He busts out a series of screenshots from his development console, which he had running while taking the survey. “You can do this yourself — fill out the survey, but don’t hit ‘Submit.’ Open Chrome’s Developer Tools, and select Network (to get the network activities). Then, back in the browser window, submit the survey.

“This shows the order of requests — the first five are the important ones.

“First, you’ll notice a curious thing — a POST (the form submission) is cancelled.

“Now, the POST before it was accepted and redirected. That POST request contains your contact information.

“The POST that was cancelled? That contains the survey data — basically, throwing it away.

“And, lastly, there’s a redirect that goes to the donate page.”

I was a little taken aback with the brazen nature of it. “You’re telling me the whole thing is a Trojan Horse to get people pissed off enough to want to donate to the GOP war chest because they don’t trust the Liberal Media?”

“Hey, man… it worked for the televangelists.”