How to rewrite this code in Laravel?

Question

Laravel

Hello.
The task is to filter all users of the site, by the date the post was created.
Accordingly, we accept the date as input, we return only users.
At the moment, I get such a fierce govnokod.
What is the best way to rewrite it?

if($request->date) {
                $unixDate = strtotime($request->date);
                $year = date('Y',$unixDate);
                $month = date('m',$unixDate);
                $day = date('d',$unixDate);

                $posts = DB::table('posts')
                    ->select('user_id')
                    ->whereYear('created_at',$year)
                    ->whereMonth('created_at',$month)
                    ->whereDay('created_at',$day)
                    ->groupBy('user_id')
                    ->get()
                    ->pluck('user_id');
                $users = User::find($posts);
                return $users;
            }

I thought a little and wrote the following version.
Is it acceptable or can it still be improved?

$users = User::whereHas(
                'posts', function($q) {
                global $request;
                $unixDate = strtotime($request->date);
                $year = date('Y',$unixDate);
                $month = date('m',$unixDate);
                $day = date('d',$unixDate);
                $q->whereYear('created_at',$year);
                $q->whereMonth('created_at',$month);
                $q->whereDay('created_at',$day);
            }
            )->get();
            return $users;

Answer 1

$users = User::whereHas('posts', function($q) use ($request) {
            $q->where('created_at', '>', \Carbon\Carbon::parse($request->date));
        }
        )->get();
        return $users;