OK, slightly off-topic rant: I have to say that timestamp is the weirdest UI element I've run across in a long time. Nothing about it gives any indication that it does anything useful. Want to link to just the thread started by a given comment? Click the timestamp. What? Why? Oh well. Want to favorite a comment? Click the timestamp. Um, OK. That's weird.
I would never think to do that and on mobile have accidentally hit it while trying to do other things and been thoroughly confused how I got there or what led me there. It seems like it would be reasonable to make each of its function into a specific link above each comment. I don't think it would make the UI too much more cluttered, personally.
As someone who originally joined more than 11 years ago, my general impression is "old timers" tend to like the arcane interface. It's part of what makes this forum brilliant.
This is a common pattern, many sites use timestamp as an anchor to the individual post. I'm guessing someone realized there wasn't anything interesting to make a timestamp link to, so you could have it do that, and save space on separate text to explicitly link to the post.
Timestamp has been the standard place to put a permalink to a post/comment on the Internet since before social media was a thing. Mainstream social media platforms like Twitter or Facebook use this technique too.
I would never think to do that and on mobile have accidentally hit it while trying to do other things and been thoroughly confused how I got there or what led me there. It seems like it would be reasonable to make each of its function into a specific link above each comment. I don't think it would make the UI too much more cluttered, personally.
OK, rant over.