I guess this is obvious, but youtube videos and online articles are micro-products. It would be trivial to charge people 10 cents an article if people felt it w

I guess this is obvious, but youtube videos and online articles are micro-products. It would be trivial to charge people 10 cents an article if people felt it would work. You would browse youtube as usual, no technical need for any extra friction at all. At most there might be a legal requirement to remind you that you will be charged. The challenge is probably mostly that a lot of publishers would need to get together and create a unified account that could be charged.