In some ways, I'm glad when twitter, reddit, etc. do things like aggressively pushing to the app or to login because it reminds me of the incentives involved and literally, actively discourages me from using their service.

You're not the target audience unfortunately. Without an account, and a curated follow list, you're likely not using the site for content discovery.

Requiring a free account is not a paywall. It takes less than a minute to create a twitter account.