If you come to the site through external links, like Facebook or Google News, you'll generally circumvent the paywall. Anything you find by browsing nytimes.com

If you come to the site through external links, like Facebook or Google News, you'll generally circumvent the paywall. Anything you find by browsing nytimes.com directly counts against the twenty free articles allowed for your account. People who only read NYT stories when they encounter a third-party link will never see the paywall, while someone who actively uses the NYT as a regular news source eventually will.