The Medium paywall relies on existing cookies to limit the amount of articles you can read in one session. Clearing your cookies or using private browsing defeats it.
The most confusing part for me is that I am unable to "clap" or bookmark the articles inside medium when I use incognito, in order to revisit them in a future time.
Bookmarking them in Raindrop is the current solution for me, but still I feel that there is a lot of friction going on.