Reddit was originally designed this way, and HN sort of accidentally copied it. Back then, we always said, "content is first". We wanted people to get upvotes for their content, not for who they were.
If you tell me that slashdot is also younger than reddit, I'm not sure what I'm going to do with myself. I swear it was around in the early 00s, if not before.
The irony is, I had an account earlier but forgot the credentials. By 1996 or so I'd devised a standardised system for creating different but memorable-to-me passwords.
Then again, it blows some folks' minds that I've had and been paying for my primary email (on cix.co.uk) since 1991. My email address is older than the world wide web.
Reddit was originally designed to share links. Then to steal images and memes from other sites. Then to steal short videos from mainly TikToc and Instagram creators (now we're here). It's still a content-first site at its finest. It's just that 'content' itself has changed.
I prefer it that way.