How can I avoid seeing "related web content" with horrible images?

September 6, 2013 4:31 AM

Recently I haven't been able to read anything on the web without seeing, in the "From the web" or "Related content" sections at the bottom of the page, two disgusting images that trigger my Trypophobia. I'm not going to link to the articles / images to avoid driving any more traffic to them, but one is an article on the infamous Surinam toad, the other is the one with the image of the person's knees covered in indentations from allegedly having knelt in frozen peas. Both links usually appears with some variation of the heading "You'll never believe what this!" These images are viscerally disgusting and disturbing to me, and I believe they are of course intended to be in order to drive clicks, and I want to stop seeing them (I see them on average about 3-4 times a day for the last couple of weeks.) I already use AdBlock for Google Chrome, but this doesn't block "sponsored content". Is there anything else I can do?
posted by ladybird to Computers & Internet (9 answers total)

Best answer: IF you have adblock installed, you can just right click on the offending content and select adblock image, then modify the filter as necessary.
posted by empath at 4:40 AM on September 6, 2013

Best answer: Using adblock, click to hide the ad, then use the little slider in the box to hide the entire "related content" div, rather than the single image. Most of these pages are probably using the same plugin to pull in those ads, so the divs will generally have the same class/ID.
posted by belladonna at 4:46 AM on September 6, 2013

You could block all images.
posted by COD at 5:06 AM on September 6, 2013 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: I just did as empath and belladonna suggested, and it seems to work on that particular page. Obviously I will have to wait and see if it works on other pages, too - but I suspect belladonna is right, that all these pages are getting the content from the same source.

Thanks, everybody...this has really been bothering me. I wish I'd Asked Metafilter sooner.
posted by ladybird at 5:10 AM on September 6, 2013

Thank you for asking this! I was wondering the same thing for the same reasons (and I'm glad you figured out the peas thing because that image was literally haunting me.)

Piggyback question: how does this work on mobile phones where you can't use adblock (like androids)?
posted by sundaydriver at 5:42 AM on September 6, 2013

Best answer: OP, the above suggestions never worked for me--the images would return as soon as I refreshed the page. I found this solution works better.
posted by girlmightlive at 7:19 AM on September 6, 2013

I think girlmightlive has it right. These recommended articles are often done through a company called Taboola, and you need to add that custom AdBlock filter to block them out. It works pretty well on my Firefox browser.
posted by Leontine at 8:06 AM on September 6, 2013

Response by poster: So far the initial fix has been working, but I'll employ girlmightlive's suggestion too just to be absodamnlutely certain I don't see those pea-knees anymore.
posted by ladybird at 10:36 AM on September 6, 2013

Sounds like you have a fix, but you might want to look into an extension like Decreased Productivity You can still see the images, but barely, unless you specifically show them, and you could toggle it on before going to a site where you seen the ad before to be safe, or before going someplace where you see that kind of thing a lot like WebMd or something.
posted by itsonreserve at 12:05 PM on September 6, 2013