I just noticed yesterday that FB Messenger ate my asterisks. Today, I just noticed that it was actually parsing my asterisks into bold! And it parses Markdown's syntax for italics too! I swear this is new. Try sending someone a message with Facebook and you can do: *bold* or _italics_ ... Yes, it's not exactly Markdown b/c Markdown requires two asterisks for bold, or else it functions as a synonym for italics with one asterisk. But still ...

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As far as I know, years ago it was allowed and then removed. So that's great, now I can annoy people with bold statements! :D

commented: That's it. u're totally right +0

To be honest, I really didn't think that Markdown was mainstream enough to be adopted by Facebook.

I guess the beauty of markdown is that they can introduce it without it really affecting people who don't know or care about it.

The only markdown directives that might get in the way are, as you said, asterisks. I guess FB chat doesn't allow hyperlinks, headings or lists?

Anything that pushes Markdown more mainstream is good though. I started a business recently that's hopefully going to introduce non-tech people to Markdown, so the more exposure the better.

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