I think that is more or less what cloudflare is trying to do with their market, and what tollbit is doing.

One nice thing about this new business model is that it doesn't rely on display ads (not that they can't do both). Conceivably ad rev could drop so low it isn't worth compromising their UX. So theoretically we could get far more readable news websites.

The new friction will be convincing the gate keepers you are a human.