The discussion revolves around the handling of blockquotes (>) in federated posts via ActivityPub, particularly between Discourse and Mastodon. Jagster notes that while HTML and Markdown are stripped during federation — which can make quoted text indistinguishable from original content — preserving > for blockquotes would greatly improve clarity. They recount a confusing interaction where a Mastodon user couldn’t tell where the quote ended and the reply began. In post 2, Jagster reiterates that while Mastodon can’t render most Markdown, the issue isn’t Mastodon’s limitations but Discourse’s conversion of Markdown to HTML before federation, which removes the > indicator. nightpool1 clarifies that Mastodon only receives rendered HTML, not original Markdown, and while adding quote indicators would be useful, it’s not as simple as preserving Markdown. Jagster concludes that if Discourse preserved > in quotes instead of converting them to HTML, the problem would be solved — suggesting the root issue lies with Discourse’s federation output, not Mastodon’s rendering. thommie asks whether this is a bug or feature requirement for the ActivityPub plugin or Mastodon itself. The consensus leans toward this being a Discourse-side issue needing plugin-level adjustment to preserve quote indicators for better federated readability.
I understand why HTMl-tags and markdown are stripped away (yet one claim about markdown is it readibility 
). Mastodon can’t show either ones.
But would there be possibility to show at least quotes with >? Nowadays system is really confusing because there is no sign what is said by OP and what is quoted.
That happened today, when a Mastodon user didn`t understand what was quoted text and where my answer begun.
I know, that Mastodon is very limited when should show html- or what ever tags, and perhaps because of that all tags must be removed.
I don’t totally understand that, because one reasoning for markdown is easy to read even when **is not processed**.
But when quotes > are stripped, it breaks content totally. Then quoted text looks like it is written by same same person than who answers — and that is really confusing and gives sometimes really schizophrenic feels.
So, could > be added or left alone?
this is a feature that would have to be added on Mastodon's end, since it has to do with how they're handling incoming HTML tags
Markdown is not used for communication between servers. Mastodon does not have access to any of the original Discourse markdown that you type in, it can only see the rendered HTML tags. However, I agree that adding some sort of indicator for block quotes would probably be good—its just harder than "show the original markdown" makes it seem
I see. Meaning Mastodon strips unwanted things, and when WordPress sends texts to fediverse/mastodon it changes like <h#>header</h#> to **header** to avoid that, but Discourse cooks everything to html-tags, and then Mastodon does cleaning? And the issue hasn’t been > ever, but changing it to html before federation?
Because Mastodon never removes markdown, it just can`t show most of it.
And we are back to beginning: the issue is Discourse, not what Mastodon does, and everything would be just fine, if lines in a quote would start with >.
Or did I understood wrong?
Ist this a bug or requirement for @angus ActvityPub Plugin? Or a Requirements for Mastodon development?