People don't like to do transactions. It taxes our brains and makes us make decisions constantly. We like all you can eat and watch as much as you like. Paying for things sucks even if you just pay small amounts.
The less tranactions, the better. At least for the majority of us. It is very rare to prefer doing many small transactions over one big.
First they want you to sign up for an account. Give a lot of personal data. Then set up a payment model, often recurring. Just to read one article? No way.
Micropayments will save some of that hassle but I don't want to have an account with every news site linked to by HN.
Half a cent per article is a plausible target for all the weak/cheap sources who can't possibly afford to put up a paywall right now because nobody would pay. It's not going to be used by the currently paywalled sites, their business model relies on getting a not-micro amount from each customer.
That extends to relatively low-friction cases like Patreon. The number of podcasters and bloggers where I've thought, quite earnestly, "I really like what this person is doing, I should kick a few quid their way," and then just not done that is near infinite. And it's never because I was feeling stingy; it's because I couldn't be arsed.
For the longest time I thought there was just something wrong with me. Rarely would you find a comment in an article about micropayments that pointed out that micropayments sound, stressful!
It causes me anxiety just having to think about having to consider making payments everytime I click on an article, for example, even if it's a tiny $0.01 amount each time.
So, on such note; when you turn on the light when entering a room, do you have anxiety thinking about how that costs money? We are constantly making tiny momentary transactions without thinking about it at all: the issue is UI, not transactions.
Gas, electricity, water are all cases where my use is metered, I _could_ try to micromanage it on a daily basis, but so long as my bills don't vary wildly from month to month, I don't pay especially close attention. To the degree that I self-regulate my use, it's more about the environment than the dollar cost. I don't think about it every time I take a shower or turn up my thermostat.
The amount of online stuff from for-profit institutions I read from month to month doesn't vary that much, and if I knew from habit what the typical range was, I think I could learn to be ok with that. But the current experience, where whenever someone links to something in a _different_ paywall than the ones I'm already in, I do have to think "would it be worth it to pay for this source?" and often the answer is "no".
Personally I don't like them because these things don't normally opt you out of ad tracking as well. When I pay I want to be the customer and not be tracked. I also don't want to give any personal details. They know nothing about me when I buy a newspaper in the shop. It should be like this :)
Brave will block tracking to some extent but we know it's not perfect.