Nobody used micropayments when they were a hassle. Today there are already Lightning-based apps breaking down that barrier, live in production using mainnet BTC.

Spinx[0] and Zion[1] are chat apps that offer room hosts the option to set a fee for joining and/or sending messages to a channel, for the purpose of spam reduction. Another cool feature already live in the app is pay-per-minute streaming of podcasts and videos.

[0]: https://sphinx.chat/ [1]: https://www.getzion.com/