WTF is going on on youtube?

[Gormenghastly]

I was watching a documentary about a British scientist, and googled an old Horizon documentary to find out more.
At the top of my search results was a man fighting a bear, live, and slaughtering it on camera. It had hashtags such as 'deathcore', and 'kill to survive'.
I clicked away immediately and reported it, but am possibly being naïve.

Is this standard now? I'm no fucking wallflower but it knocked me utterly sick. I didn't ask for this, nor does my search history inform the algorithm that I would be even interested in this, so why?

Someone will likely have a pop at me for posting this, being AIBU, but I have been aware of ugly shit online for a long time, but this took the goddamn cake.

How to even avoid? I could not have done anything differently.

I'm sorry but this just isn't the case.
It's like telling me 'I asked for it' ffs.

I have used you tube since 2011- Haven't had content like this recommended at all. {Thank goodness!}

Sounds like we watch the same type of content. I too would be horrified by this. I had no idea it was even available on YouTube. Who the hell is uploading and watching animals suffering??? That's so sad and l would be reporting it.

Something odd is happening on YouTube and I noticed it a couple of months ago. As a result I’ve turned off notifications and don’t use it.

Essentially I started getting notifications on phone to watch clips from GB News, Katie Hopkins and some bloke saying Tommy Robinson is innocent. Nothing in my search histories would ever suggest I would never be interested in seeing this type of content. It’s like they are forced hard right wing messaging into my feed. I accidentally clicked a KH one when I was trying to block it and it counted as a view. It’s very sinister.

In a way it's like saying 'ive never been assaulted' so it can't be true!

I pay for an ad blocker that stops trackers and popups- it makes for a very peaceful and much more pleasant browsing experience.
No blaring ads or anything else.

I wonder if this helps?

This is how the screen looks with it

Again, those insisting it's based on something, it's not a recommendation. When you open YouTube and click "All" you get results based on your watch history. This is a search result so this particular video has Ivan, 1984, Horizon in the tags or description.

It seems there is a band called Slaughter to Prevail which matches the #slaughtertoprevail tag and they have a song called... 1984. I assume it's used in the video and it's been pushed up the search results due to 2m views.

According to Wiki "Alex Terrible" is the lead singer!

I’ve just done some research for you. The guy in the video is in a Russian metal band called Slaughter to Prevail, his stage name is Alex Terrible, he wrestled a bear. He does not kill the bear. The hashtag ‘death core’ refers to the type of heavy metal music that his band plays, the hashtag ‘kill to survive’ is a synonym for the band name.

I'm sorry you were upset by the idea of the video. It is idiotic and I in no way support men wrestling bears but I hope you are slightly reassured that it wasn’t a bear snuff movie

I have something similar happen to me sometimes, when i search for eg crochet videos and really upsetting stuff comes up, nothing to do with what i searched for or anything I've previously watched. So it's not just you OP. I dont know how to make it stop unfortunately, i tend to just not use the search function as much.

YouTube algorithms can be weird. There was a lengthy phase where if I searched for crochet videos, in amongst those I would get a random video of an extremely unwell anorexic vlogger, completely unrelated to crochet, and a different video of a terminally ill woman with her 'goodbye' video. Both were very disturbing videos and unrelated to anything I had ever searched for.
Others were also saying this was happening to them when they searched for crochet videos. Go figure.

I put the same search term as you had in your image into the YouTube app and that video came top of the results, it didn’t autoplay. It’s not live, it’s been up for 3 years. I can’t stand human cruelty either.

It's often the tags, there might be an innocent word in your search phrase that links to the unwanted video. Or lowlifes post grim videos with innocent tags, to deliberately catch people out.

I’d guess that as your search term is so specific as to return very few good matches the search algorithm has simply looked at the word in your search expression most likely to provide good matches - that word seems to be “Ivan” which would match with “Ivan The Terrible” and that looks like the connection to the video title “Alex Terrible…” - it does look to be a very bad quality search result: I’m surprised that there weren’t other results that ranked higher.

You can try turning on restricted mode to eliminate ‘potentially mature content’
support.google.com/youtube/answer/174084?hl=en-GB&co=GENIE.Platform%3DAndroid

It’s absolutely irrelevant if this is based on OPs search history or not. Dodgy stuff just shouldn't be online - full stop.

The tech companies have for so much to answer for. But that genie is now out of the bottle.

I use something called Float Tube. It allows me to watch yt video over other things (I like certain asmr sounds for study) but an added bonus is it doest seem to have anything like the algorithms actual yt has and the suggested videos are very, very closely linked to what I already watch and search for.

I think that anorexia vlogger is the same person who came up for me when i searched crochet tutorials! They must have put some crochet related tags in them.

Well, no, it isn't when people start suggesting to the poor OP that someone is browsing violent content on her account.

I’m not remotely suggesting this is on OPs search history. I’m saying even if in some
messed up way it was, why would such content even be allowed.

It's not some nefarious group skewing algorithms somehow is it?

Two posters have solved it - it’s a music video for a death metal band where he wrestles a bear, it’s got 1984 in the album title which is why it came up in the search made by OP.

@ForeverDelayedEpiphany Wow I’d completely forgotten about that website!! Now you’ve mentioned it I remember it vividly!

I remember when you tube first came out there were lots of awful awful videos then they got better at managing this

but I don’t think they like to try too hard as with Facebook who have had live streaming of terrible violence it creates interest and the word spreads very quickly

When I had a new phone and hadn't linked my Google account all of the YouTube hits on the one page were of American shootings and highly aggressive videos. Similarly on a new twitter account before. Liked anything or had followed anything, similarly on TikTok I got a load of videos with baby's disabled with baby shaken syndrome. Once I linked my Google account all was well with the world but worrying those were the default

OK, I've just had a nose at this.

When I search for "Horizon 1984: Ivan UK", I don't get the video you've posted, but I do get this one thats uploaded by the same person -

It's a heavy metal video, uploaded by "Alex Terrible", of the song "1984" by his band "Slaughter to Prevail". No animals are harmed in the making of this video, although my ear drums will never be the same after hearing it.

So I'm guessing it shows up in the search results due to the 1984 link. The band also seem to be russian, so youtube may be getting "Ivan" from somewhere too.

So, onto the bear video. It seems like this "Alex Terrible" has a pet bear. And he play fights with it much in the way I do with my cat. I've watched the whole video so you don't have to, and you'll be pleased to know that the bear survives unscathed. Alex looks a bit worse for wear, but I'm not convinced that isn't fake blood.

And the tags you're worried about. "Deathcore" is the genre of music his band play, and "Slaughtertoprevail" is just the name of the band.

It's still not great obviously, keeping a bear as a pet isn't a great idea, and wrestling with it seems to be a good way to get yourself killed. But from having a look through a few videos, this guy does seem to care about the bear, and certainly has no interest in killing it.

Edit: Actually, the video of the bear was uploaded by someone else, but it is a video of Alex Terrible and his bear.