dang obvious to see.

In seriousness, those links can go bad and cause popping sounds, even while looking fine. But the popping sounds generally occur when going over uneven terrain, with making a turn (the entire reason for a sway bar) while going over the uneven terrain really bringing out the noise.

Now, it is possible that torque steer might also be cause the sway bar links to pop, if they are in really bad shape. It's the links with ball joints that tend to go bad, and it can be tough to see that they are bad just by looking at them.