Off the Feed looks at the systems that decide what we see: editorial choices, curation, then algorithms, and the business models behind them. In this first episode, Pascal Somarriba, who has 30 years of experience in media and platforms, talks with Abdallah Slaiman and Nicolas Lallemant, who has worked in growth marketing for 15 years, five of them at Google.

The starting point is the HYK manifesto: creation is not content. For Abdallah, content is there to occupy space and carry a message, while a creation awakens perceptions and feelings. Pascal recalls that television spoke of programmes and catalogues, and that the word « content » came with the platforms where anyone could post anything. Nicolas adds a practical view: artists need posts to be discovered, but a relationship is built on the creation itself.

They talk about business models. When a platform lives from advertising, it sells attention, and artists are pushed to conform to formats instead of digging into what makes them singular. Abdallah puts it at about €0.003 per stream: around 100,000 streams to earn €300. Pascal adds that 100 people giving €3 bring the same amount. Since HYK does not live from advertising, Abdallah explains, it wants to present creations differently: a project in the works is a dynamic map of cultural territories, to step out of the feed.

The name HYK comes from hiking: taking time, exploring, being surprised. Pascal remembers a study at Canal+ showing how grateful subscribers were when they discovered something they would not have found alone, and the Canal+ mosaic channel, once one of the most watched. The question of serendipity, and of the choices hidden behind the technology, sets up the guests of the next episodes.