You were right to not think of it. What happens is that if two instances can federate, they do not begin federating on their own. Searching the URL or a user on the other instance (eg. @someusername@someinstance.com) the federation process and the backend starts pulling all the info it needs to be able to display content from that instance.
You were right to not think of it. What happens is that if two instances can federate, they do not begin federating on their own. Searching the URL or a user on the other instance (eg. @someusername@someinstance.com) the federation process and the backend starts pulling all the info it needs to be able to display content from that instance.