These ads drive everybody mad. I read a seemingly well-written and researched article, reach these ads and generally lower my opinion of the article, the author and the site. The only good thing about them is that they were a good indicator of a site that is pushing to make money in any way possible which, in my mind, indicates poor ethics. How can you remove these intrusive, often unethical links?
I use the Privacy Badger plugin on Chrome to keep tabs on trackers, auto-block in some cases and to manually block scripts if needed. It’s simple to block Taboola. Here’s an example of a site that used it, before and after applying the Privacy Badger block. More information on how to do this is below.
Here’s the Privacy Badger drop-down that clearly indicates the scripts/trackers being used. I’ve set them all to ‘blocked.’
How did I find out that Taboola was being used? I used the Chrome ‘Inspect Element’ feature which you can use in any case of unwanted content that is added via script.
You’ll be able to view the HTML and Javascript used at the point on the page at which you performed a ‘right-click’ and you can scan that code for clues on the provider or domain name. In this case it’s easy to see that a ‘Widget’ was used. (Probably in the WordPress blogging system.) Using that information you can select the appropriate elements to block in Privacy Badger
If we all block these then they tend to zero revenue generation and they’ll eventually be dropped from websites. We hope!
