The entrance being behind a paywall is bad, but if you’re not aware of it before using the toilet this holds you hostage unable to get clean until you pay up, with either your money or your attention. I’d say this is a more evil design, even though both are evil.
I was hoping qwant, with its own (partial) search index, would be immune to it, but searching for neocities also doesn’t show any results for neocities.org there unfortunately, or at least it did not for me.