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Absolute Timestamp Switch?

 So, every so often, when I load my timeline or a post, I'll briefly see a date and timestamp, before it will suddenly switch to "5 min ago" or "1 mo ago". I think it'd be nice to add an option in user settings to toggle between relative and absolute timestamps.


18 people like this idea

 This should be essential, as although you can hover over a relative date on desktop to see the exact timestamp (confirming that Cohost does keep that information associated with the chost), you cannot do this at all on mobile in any way I've seen. This is very annoying sometimes.

As the site gets older, relative timestamps lose their usefulness fast. What month was "5 months ago"? And when the site is old enough for it, how useful is "1 year ago" in a post that makes a clear reference to the date, like, "I plan to distribute it one week from now", or "it's way too cold for the season"? It's particularly uninformative for logged out users finding an old post from a web search: they can't change their settings and don't know they can mouseover to see the real date.

By default, dates really should revert to absolute after a few days.

1 person likes this

This would be lovely. I hate relative timestamps SO much.


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I know you can mouse over it on desktop to see the absolute timestamp, but that doesn't work on mobile.


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