It's not a development problem, it's an adoption problem. Publishers are desperate to sell us on a $20+/month subscription, they don't want to offer convenient affordable access to single articles.

$20/month would be nice if it wasn't a tier with less ads. I want no ads, and full-text rss feeds (because I want to use my clients to read). It's like how Netflix refuses to build a basic search and filter, or Spotify refuses to an actual library manager. They don't want you in control of your consumption.

If people were forced to pay for websites by the http request people would demand that websites stop loading a ton of externally hosted JS, stop filling sites with ads, and would demand that websites actually have content worth the price.

There are so many links I click on these days that are such trash I'd be demanding refunds constantly.

>There are so many links I click on these days that are such trash

That is why AI "summarization" becomes a necessary intermediate layer. You'd not see nor trash nor ads, and thus the payment instead of being exposed to the ads. AI saves the Internet :)