The micro-transaction proposals everyone cried about in the early 2000's would have been so much better than this.
The odds of me paying for a subscription for some tiny local newspaper on the other side of the country are literally nil, but I'd be far more willing toss you a penny or two to read the content of a single article.
yet empirically, most people wont. And a business model require it work for most people, not just a standout few like yourself.
This is even accounting for a proper transaction cost reduction in microtransactions!
The reason i say this is because microtransactions _do_ work in other areas - such as gacha games, in-app purchases etc (where the transaction costs have somewhat been minimized but not completely demolished).
Empirically how? To my knowledge, there's never been a widespread micropayments system that targeted this use case. So how do we know? All we know is that publishers think micropayments would eat into their subscription revenue, and that they want readers to give them personal information so they can spam and track them (something that may not be possible with micropayments).
So how do we know this, empirically? I don't think we do.
as in, because the microtransactions mechanisms already exist, and has been successfully monetized in other areas. The fact that news publishers don't use it (and opt for subscribers instead) is an indication that it doesnt work.
It could also indicate that the news "industry" has been utterly decimated and destroyed and defunded over the past 50 years and they don't really have the cashflow to play around and experiment with business strategies because they are desperately hanging on as it is and have all sorts of data showing them that they will never have the business they had 50 years ago no matter what because the simple reality is that humans prefer listening to a moronic talking head not ask hard questions over actual journalism anyway.
which is exactly what "doesn't work" means - not enough revenue from microtransations compared to another avenue (such as subscription + adverts).
> they don't really have the cashflow to play around and experiment with business strategies
i suppose that's possible as well - but some news outlets do have sufficient revenue to experiment, and they either hadnt, or have and found it wanting.
> not ask hard questions over actual journalism
that has nothing to do with the funding model. You're conflating separate concerns - one being a business concern, and one being a civic concern.