to chime in generally beyond trying to reproduce what's causing this: there are a lot of weird things that go on with federation that are--frankly--inscrutable to us. in a lot of cases like this we find that we have no sense of why it's like that; in many cases where we do, it's not immediately clear what the fix is (if any). in the long term i'd like for people more familiar with the technical side of federation to help troubleshoot issues like this and maybe compile something we can quickly refer to for diagnoses.