Better the opposite - date by default and on hover human readable. People would more likely want to copy the actual date than the human readable delta.
I find dates more readable as an ordered list of numbers. A thread can be quickly scrolled down through while seeing >2001 then eventually >2024 at the same x-position on the page. Same goes with the month then day.
Anyway, in the context of a comment/activity thread, how long ago from today that an entry was tends to be less important than the age of the comment relative to the other comments.
Like I said, agree to disagree, diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks and all that, but to me, after a day, the most pertinent at-a-glance information there is "this was received yesterday". I definitely think it's more useful for more recent things that can say "37 minutes ago" or "3 hours ago", but to me, "yesterday" is also useful. (I might prefer it if it said "yesterday morning" and "yesterday evening" or something like that, but I rarely care about the exact time, after a day.)
Yes, but I think the solutions work fine; tap, hard press, whatever.
Don't get me wrong, I share the annoyance with interfaces where I have no way to find the actual timestamp. It's better to only have a timestamp than to only have the "human readable" version with no way to get the timestamp. But (in my opinion) the best is to have the human readable version, with a way to get at the timestamp.
I think the problem is that the mechanism to trigger mouse-hover is not clear on a touchscreen - there are several different ways that need to be remembered and tried, as evidenced by your comment.
Yes, but I think the venn diagram of people who really want to see a timestamp and people who are willing and able try a few different things to find it is pretty close to being a circle.