I've tried to recommend Beehaw to others, but I don't think I've gotten a single bite. Because when they visit Beehaw, they also see content from the other parts of Lemmy -- both posts and comments -- that Beehaw still federates with, including .ml, and are turned off by a lot of it.

A big part of it is not understanding how the fediverse works, but that's to be expected; it is confusing. But even having heard my explanation, they're often still like, "Meh, I'll just stick with reddit..." because, as you mentioned, first impressions are everything.