Maybe instead of usernames, the instances could store/trade... salted hashes of the usernames where the salt is the title or unique identifier of the post/comment being voted on?

I didn't have time to reply earlier, but I was thinking the same thing, except with the extra step of replacing the username with a unique user identifier randomly generated at signup by the user's instance and kept secret.

I wonder if there's a way to prevent people from even knowing that two different votes came from the same user.

[–] TootSweet@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I wonder if there’s a way to prevent people from even knowing that two different votes came from the same user.

What I outlined above should prevent anyone from knowing two different votes came from the same user... without specifically trying that user's id on each. That's what the salt (the comment/post id) is for.

[–] Redkey@programming.dev 2 points 9 hours ago

I was thinking of a variable-length hash, but if we use a fixed length (which I acknowledge the term "salt" does imply), then I agree.