In this article, Nikita Prokopov discusses the issue with the “yesterday”/”2 days ago”/”a week ago” labels commonly used on websites. Prokopov argues that these labels, while attempting to mimic human language, actually fail to accurately convey the concept of time. Humans understand “yesterday” as the day before the current day, while computers often define it as anything less than 24 hours ago. The inconsistent implementation of these labels across different platforms also leads to a lack of trust and decreased usefulness. Prokopov suggests that anything longer ago than yesterday should simply display the actual date. Additionally, the author questions the usefulness of relative time indicators, as some websites update them in real-time while others do not.
https://mjtsai.com/blog/2023/10/13/relative-time-labels/