This is where crypto actually makes sense, as payment infrastructure. A browser wallet on modular extensions of Ethereum, like Base or Arbitrum, could handle sub-cent payments instantly. You could read three articles and be down 3 cents, no login required and no data trail. And if it's all built on open standards, you avoid the usual siloing problems you'd get with Apple or PayPal running the system, like a private company gaining control over a monopoly and abusing that position to extract economic rent.
Smart contracts could automate revenue splits between writers and outlets, basically a decentralized Spotify for news, but programmable. And crucially, if payments are peer-to-peer, the biggest regulatory burdens — the terribly thought out KYC/AML anti-privacy laws — don’t apply. Those laws target intermediaries, not end users. That’s critical for making anonymous micropayments viable at scale.
Most past micropayment models failed because the rails weren’t there. Now, thanks to upgrades to public blockchain technology, they are, or at least we're getting close.