So what? Your micropayments platform makes it easy to create an account with a website, put $5 into their payment bucket, and then automatically pay a cent or two every article you read. You're splitting hairs over definitions, but the grandparent's point is simple: The model is already there. Candy Crush bonuses or Journalistic Articles doesn't matter. Give the payers a bucket they can throw five or ten bucks into at a time, that gives them pain-free access for long enough that they don't feel annoyed throwing another five bucks in later.

> So what? Your micropayments platform makes it easy to create an account with a website, put $5 into their payment bucket...

That's it right there. That's the "what". :)

Paying 0.01 cents to someone is quite different from paying $5 to that same someone that gets delivered in tiny portions over some span of time.

In the first case, you're out a tiny fraction of a cent. In the second case, you're out $5.

Because (AIUI) the money movement system makes it prohibitively expensive to move fractions of cents around, micropayments don't happen.

Which is, in fact, exactly the model of Google Contributor.

Puts $5 each month into a bucket, and then each time you visit a site you pay a few cents in order to have an ad-free experience.