http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/18/changetip/Those who want a better business model for online content, i.e. one that isn’t based on increasingly invasive surveillance and increasingly insidious advertising, have long held up the hope that micropayments could power an alternative rewards-based system, where the cumulative act of lots of users donating small amounts to the services they use and love adds up to something substantial. It’s a great idea in principle but in practice there are ongoing barriers to creating a web powered by micropayments — transaction fees being one of the biggest.