I feel like it's not just instances, but also the groups. I've carefully selected a bunch of well-moderated groups that bring me content I care about, and I interact regularly.

But I know what you're talking about, because every time I go there, I'm logged out and I have to see the front page. If I make the mistake of reading it, I'm horrified every time.

Then, I refresh the page and I'm logged in, and it's basically just a well-tended forum again.

Also, yes, there's a bug that shows me as logged out, but if I ctrl-shift-R, it refreshes with me logged in again. A regular refresh doesn't do it. I cannot imagine what that bug is, and nothing I've done has cleared this in my Firefox. So weird.