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.