Marcel Mauss described the gift as obligatory, non-market exchange that binds communities through reciprocity rather than price. But the way the Fediverse is usually described splits the picture in two. Either the community carries itself and the infrastructure stays invisible, or the technical layer works and the community is assumed to follow. Both readings drop the same thing. An instance is a party to the exchange, and where giver and recipient are strangers, it acts as proxy for the absent party.

Standing in for absent parties is work. Someone keeps books, someone understands liability, someone manages conflict. Gift-economy language, taken uncritically, makes these roles look superfluous, when they are how an instance becomes addressable. A proxy that cannot be held to account is not a proxy but an owner.

My own attempt to measure a Fediverse community failed instructively. Built for a Data Analyst (IHK) certification and never published, it ran into a legally heterogeneous field, opt-in terms of service, and metrics that read silence as absence where it hid real depth. Reciprocity is why. A gift leaves no data trail, because the return is neither scheduled nor addressed.

This is where the bill arrives. If participation cannot be measured, accountability has to attach to the proxy instead. Which form of proxy we build is the open question. I speak as treasurer of a digital rights nonprofit and as someone training as a Bilanzbuchhalter with a background in sociology.