https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu
It was decidedly non-free. The code was owned by Autodesk, and the protocol was supposed to include micro-transactions applied to all content access so that authors would always get paid.
There was also Microcosm, HyperG and others. The Web was notable amongst them in avoiding money and licensing sort of stuff altogether (e.g. Xanadu made a point about micropayments for lots of content, and I think many of the others fell to the temptation of catering to cash in some way or other).
You can have a world where all people are capable of trivially transacting, without having anyone else say no, and consequently, financial crime is trivial, and a nigh-intractable problem to handle. Or you have the ability to enforce sanctions, anti-money laundering, and taxation laws, financial crime is at least tractable with sufficient will, and you have the perfect abusable engine of tyranny through which people can be completed ousted from society through financial lockout or micromanagement. Almost inevitably, you will not be the one with your hand on that button.
Choose wisely.
But don't you think that today's internet already provides lockout and micromanagement without ever needing the microtransaction part?
This is actually all the talks around censorship on various platforms and random ejection from various marketplace/social system without much recourse for some (can go from being censored on any given social network, to being prevented to publish on app stores, to having your google account fully taken away).
Sure, you might still be able to access the internet, but is that relevant? What people come to do on the internet is more in relation with other people than anything else. Tech doesn't matter that much; everything ends up being built around social networks/issues.
And in the end, the internet is just a layer built on top of a physical system that is very much dependent on a given social structure/hierarchy. If that social structure wants you out, it won't make much of a difference how your internet software works.
I kind of get what you are saying, but I fail to see how a microtransaction internet would be any more tyrannical than the "real world".
> Sure, you might still be able to access the internet, but is that relevant?
I think that's the core point being made: if transaction are built into the infrastructure, then all the financial controls inevitably get built into the infrastructure such that you can't access the network any more.
I feel like your response rests on the assumption that Facebook/Google/<Provider that can choose to lock you out> _are_ the internet. But the defining point of the Web that succeeded for many was the long tail part of it, people and provider who aren't motivated to reject people for monetary related reasons.
As long as we're on the Web without transactions, there'll always be somewhere/someone you can go and interact with.
If transactions and subsequent monetary policy were implemented in the low level protocol, then you could be locked out in a way which meant you can't reach/find the people who would still want to interact with you.
One allows subcultures and counter-cultures to grow if they want, the other doesn't.
Without money data centers and infrastructure don’t happen.
So now instead of microtransactions we get plastered with ads ad nauseam.
But people don’t want to pay even a single cent for a 10 minute article.
A seamless ubiquitous interface and accounting system for penny sized transactions hasn't been introduced anywhere I am aware of.
It would need to be incredibly convenient, easy, reliable, secure, private. With flexible permissioning (subscription list, ok to pay list, etc.) so people were not hammered by "Do you want to pay?" popups all the live long day.
But we only get full on subscription that are at least few euros per month and those are annoying to manage and it's quite complicated to evaluate the value beforehand (unlike say a traditional magazine that you can buy as a single issue to test before subbing).
And when you find one-time payments, they are usually high price (around 3€ minimum seems to be the usual) and worse than that, you rarely can own the stuff. You purchase "access" with a license and no way to really save the thing as your own, making the whole thing a bit of a joke, and piracy the only truly sane solution.
That is around 162 billion a year in cash flow.
The biggest provider operational costs are aroud 37B. For everything, not only fiber. And controls 50% of the FTTH market.
I mean is quick maths but looks like it does pay for it.