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.
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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.