Hugh on Nostr: Search searches the local server database and also if you type in a full username ...

Search searches the local server database and also if you type in a full username will do a webfinger request.

So likely bne.social has an external user account in the DB - cached, as you say, but it’s more like a full account in the DB. I think this could be expunged if a server admin does a full server block of that user.

If you resurrect the domain with new webfinger data I *think* you could kind of force an update to cached data elsewhere, but you’d have to trigger it somehow: probably by sending a signed ‘Move’ activity to all servers that have a record of that user.