Small business is just a propaganda tool. The idea has some allure, maybe because it reminds Americans of their priomordial beginning as settlers, homesteaders, yeomans, craftsmen (or so the stories go).
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?query=community%20identity%20by:dang...
I'm definitely not disagreeing "small business" has been turned into a propaganda term. That process was helped by the silly tax classification of what's a "small business". A lot of marketing dollars go into making people think the mom and pop florist when they hear the term and not the hedge fund.