Each instance has a /instances/ url that shows its current federation links at least. It doesn't tell you its federation config, but you can at least tell if the federation list looks weirdly small or the blocklist looks weirdly big.
And you can see that monero house has a pretty short list in comparison. This is absolutely a page I was scoping out when shopping around for an instance to join. I would also spend some time scrolling through /modlog/ to get a feel for what their moderation was like in practice.