I've seen several of the creepy / disturbing live videos described above - the begging family and the baby with the large deformed head specifically. Each have been shown multiple times, despite immediately reporting them. So this isn't a unique artefact of OP's experience. There clearly are ways of bringing these videos, which are clearly pretty far outside any normative preference pattern, to the front of the algorithm.

Shouldn't have to point this out - but I do not search for, like or watch anything remotely similar on Tiktok.