CYP Trading - post Fuji validation, page-169

Yes brokers do sell high frequency trading accounts which are a paid subscription (per year I understand) and do not charge per trade. So for these people small volume trades are practical. They are used in conjunction with automatic algorithms colocated at or near the exchange to minimise latency, so if you are a day trader your chances of competing with these things are next to zero. I wouldn't bother. So a long term perspective is often the better option for a retail investor.

This is all not new, it's been going on for well over a decade.