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.
Oooh okay I get it now.
If you type one of beehaw’s post URL on the lemmygrad search bar, you will be able to access it. Example:
https://lemmygrad.ml/post/383684?scrollToComments=true
And you can see I was able to post a comment there.
But if you look at the post on beehaw : https://beehaw.org/post/131299?scrollToComments=true
My comment doesn’t show up there, it hasn’t been federated.
We can’t see scores or their comments either, it’s essentially just a list of posts
lmao they deleted the post as well 🤔
deleted by creator
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.