I also hope this happens. It would be interesting too, if it was bidirectional (services paying you to use them. Payment for your data, essentially).

People always say "why, why not micropayments"? Micropayments require even smaller transaction fees. Really small transaction fees require centralized regulation and economies of scale, i.e. government control and monopoly. You can't have your freedom and your frictionless markets both. The more anarchy, the more expensive buying and selling is, and the more business models and options for wealth creation simply can't work.

> Really small transaction fees require centralized regulation and economies of scale, i.e. government control and monopoly.

No they don't.

I could sign up for the ten most popular micropayment services and the fees would be about the same as if I signed up for just one.

Are there ten popular micropayment services? Does it cost anything in time and effort to use them? Who do you trust to tell you which micropayment services are good and trustworthy?

> Are there ten popular micropayment services?

It exists just as much as your government monopoly. We're talking about a world where sites let people pay microtransactions, not the current state of the real world. I'm just pointing out that it is definitely not necessary to have government control to have really small transaction fees.

> Does it cost anything in time and effort to use them?

Whatever the government version you proposed would do, let's keep it simple and make them act exactly the same.

> Who do you trust to tell you which micropayment services are good and trustworthy?

I dunno, who tells you that visa or stripe or kofi is good and trustworthy? If creators flock to a site, they'll draw in users.

(1) totally agree re money being an answer here, (2) not sure it solves DDOS mitigation, especially if you're giving away a free preview

This would make search engines impossible, sadly.

Why do you think that?

Contrary, I think it would make search engines better!