I just clicked around the NYT and opened about 20 articles to get the paywall to come up so I could find my own way around it. Couldn't even trigger the paywall

I just clicked around the NYT and opened about 20 articles to get the paywall to come up so I could find my own way around it. Couldn't even trigger the paywall. Does it come up when a 3rd party site links to an article or after a certain amount of usage? Given how difficult it seems to be to actually GET to the paywall I can't see any point to all of this.