The traditional argument against this from Clay Shirky and probably others is [ADDED: mental] transaction costs. As soon as you're confronted with having to make a decision about whether the content behind a headline is worth paying for or not the mental calculus will often be "no."

The relative recent popularity of all-you-can-eat streaming of music and video vs. a la carte purchases would seem to support this view--although one could also argue that digital music and video purchases aren't really "micro."

crypto solves this

Something like brave solves it, by automatically paying without you deciding or not, hiding the cost in your electrical bill, or in higher prices at cafes.

But you can have automatic payments without crypto too. Hiding payments from the UX is what's actually solving the problem

It's "solving the problem" in the sense that it's spending your money without getting your explicit approval. That does make sense in some cases--my electrical, oil, and water bill basically work that way--but they're also pretty predictable and I probably couldn't realistically reduce them all that much even if I wanted to.

ADDED: That said, it's not unrealistic to imagine a "hidden" micropayments scheme that deducts automatically and lets you know and/or just turns off if you hit some monthly threshold.

That's exactly how Brave works after you setup the wallet and it gives you two options:

- pay a variable amount to the website you visit, based on how many visits and time you spent on;

- pay a fixed amount to a website of your choice;

Both options can be enabled at the same time, and the minimum number of visit, or the minimum length of the same, is adjustable;

Flattr[0] should be similar with fiat currency.

[0] https://flattr.com/

This might incentivise "below the fold" clickbait, or simply pretending that you have the answer to a query when you don't. It could also encourage splitting content and keep the user bouncing from article to article (when looking for a specific answer).

that seem crazy expensive, so one article read by 10K paid readers earns media/author 500USD? can't imagine quality of article deserving 500 USD