Mastodon should either support markdown, or pass through the marks unaltered.
What they do now is the only wrong choice, they strip the marks, and don’t render.
In other words if I use md’s equiv of *italics* either turn it into actual italics or leave the asterisks alone.
@davew As far as I can tell it does leave the *asterisks* alone, no? Screenshot from my client (Ivory):
