From what I understand, this is an issue with using different timestamp formats between implementations. In this case, it’s with kbin and Lemmy.
I think the concerns about smaller instances are valid (as I post from lemmus.org). Some additional data points to consider when evaluating an instance would be whether they’re running a recent version and the uptime of the instance.
It’d probably be a good idea to have a page that promotes these smaller instances that ‘score’ well to help distribute some of the load.
Is it drawing characters by default or are you providing additional context in the prompt?