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Normally I would agree but Markdown-esque text annotation has been a feature of many commonly used platforms for years now. A quick search plus my own knowledge tells me the following platforms support it: Facebook Messenger, Skype, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Telegram and Reddit posts. It looks like LINE, Viber and Kik Messenger don't support it, but those are the only major ones that don't seem to.

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Markdown is supported, but is it required? I know lots of Messenger and Skype users that have never heard of Markdown.

Perhaps an embarrassing case in point I have been a developer, sysadmin, infra architect, and generally in IT industry for couple of decades. I am not professional but dabble in HTML/CSS/JS. Certainly use social media.

And every now and then think to myself "I should check what this 'markdown' thing is" :P

Checking it now, I can absolutely agree that 100% of my non-developer friends will believe it is code and beyond them [both untrue as facts but true as perceptions]. And trying to persuade them otherwise will only convince them further how much out of touch with "the real world" I am :D

I don't mean they've heard of it, indeed what most of these platforms support isn't Markdown but a similar simplified ruleset. I mean that more people than one might think are using the general concepts of Markdown on a daily basis.

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