viewing remote magazines requires an initial search

if nobody has interacted with a magazine before, visiting the link directly at kbin.example.com/m/newmagazine@remote.example.com will 404.

typing newmagazine@remote.example.com into the search bar, though, will display the magazine, freshly created on kbin.example.com where you can then subscribe to it. and after that, visiting kbin.example.com/m/newmagazine@remote.example.com will work normally

couldn't kbin do the same thing, even if it had never seen the magazine or even the remote instance before, when visiting the url directly the first time? why require a search to federate?