I feel like there were companies in the past that did try this, where you would chuck $5 or whatever in an account, and then each page you went to that supported the service would extract a micropayment from the account.

Never took off. Should have done. e.g. in Santa Cruz there is https://lookout.co , which is pretty good, but extremely pricy for what it is. There has to be a way between "pay and get everything", "ignore/go straight to 12ft.io".