> Is there something I'm missing here about why people might prefer relative timestamps? I think most people are uncomfortable parsing timestamps for small-int

> Is there something I'm missing here about why people might prefer relative timestamps? I think most people are uncomfortable parsing timestamps for small-interval differences, e.g. `2025-12-19T16:28:09+00:00` for "31 seconds ago". For larger intervals, I agree that timestamps are more useful. "1 day ago" is a particular bugbear of mine. One day meaning, 13 hours, or meaning 35 hours? Sometimes that's important! The original advice when relative timestamps became a thing was to choose based on the activity level of the content. If new content is constantly appearing and older stuff fades out of relevance quickly, then choose relative timestamps. Otherwise, use absolute timestamps. The worst is inconsistency, and the best is sometimes both (when presented in a discoverable and convenient way -- hover text used to be that way, but this degrades on mobile).