You have not seen some photon instances lol. lemdro.id's admins have been really busy, so I don't blame them for anything. they've also been early supporters from the start of photon.
Here's a list of ancient photon instances i've seen:
lemy.lol (so old that it literally crashes on load)
I really dislike when people host photon on their own stuff, and I prefer people use phtn.app. There's greater chance for error and old versions can give people a negative view of the client.
I don't understand what this means. There are no redirect calls at all in photon other than for /comment urls, and certain layouts.