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   Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 01:27:15 JST Anil Dash

   I've been working on this one for a while. The multi-trillion-dollar AI industry? Their *most advanced platforms* are controlled by a plain text format that John Gruber made up for his blog, and then bounced off of a 17-year-old Aaron Swartz, before sharing it with the world for free. *That* is the internet. Here's the amazing (true!) story of how Markdown took over the world. https://www.anildash.com/2026/01/09/how-markdown-took-over-the-world/

   • Embed this notice
     Tim Chambers (tchambers@indieweb.social)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 01:29:19 JST Tim Chambers

     in reply to

     @anildash Crazy but cool.

   • Embed this notice
     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 01:35:38 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Roy

     @roy thanks — amusingly, I broke _all_ the links in the piece by mangling the markdown with a script. feels apropos. 🤣 should be fixed in a sec!

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     Roy (roy@yoroy.eu)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 01:36:04 JST Roy

     in reply to

     @anildash quite a few (all?) broken links in there for me. Your own site URL is in front of all the outgoing links.

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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 01:39:02 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     (Yes I _did_ break all the links in the piece by mangling the Markdown, thankyouverymuch lol. Should be fixed momentarily! It turns out it's tricky to have examples of markdown syntax in the same piece where you actually have markdown content.)

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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 02:10:29 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • blaine

     @blaine well, I think Markdown actually only *is* the easy parts. The more advanced stuff only exists for the experts. But I take your point, for sure.

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     blaine (blaine@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 02:10:30 JST blaine

     in reply to

     @anildash one day I'd love to change your mind. Markdown is a great tool for low-consequence things but I have *scars* from dealing with situations where devs thought it was a good idea to put it in front of non-technical people with flavours that had bespoke functionality.

     As a result of markdown's success in scratching an itch for folks who understand html, the tech industry has woefully under-built text editing tools for people who find HTML and markdown confusing.

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     blaine (blaine@mastodon.social)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 02:10:30 JST blaine

     in reply to

     @anildash (and the argument that markdown is "easy" to me represents a tech chauvinism, because I have 100% listened to smart people who have tried to use it and found it very confusing for anything but trivial examples like *bold*, even though I think a lot of your assessment is spot on 💜)

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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 02:10:52 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • patrislav ♾️ #RIPNatenom

     @patrislav the anildash dot com guarantee: no AI art, just janky photos that make people smile :)

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     patrislav ♾️ #RIPNatenom (patrislav@chaos.social)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 02:10:54 JST patrislav ♾️ #RIPNatenom

     in reply to

     @anildash tired: blog post picture with AI generated cartoon image
     wired: blog post picture with retrocomputer and Jägermeister 🤩

   • Embed this notice
     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 02:11:44 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Carl Malamud
     • Jeff Smith

     @sumisu3 @carlmalamud yes, I do know there's history there (and actually prior to that, by some arguments), but I think we're splitting hairs for any lay person if we argue that podcasts predate the iPod.

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     Jeff Smith (sumisu3@mastodon.nz)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 02:11:45 JST Jeff Smith

     in reply to

     • Carl Malamud

     @anildash one important note/correction to one statement in your article.

     You said in 2002 the podcast wasn’t yet invented. Actually @carlmalamud invented (but it wasn’t called) podcasts in 92/93 by hosting guests on his Internet Radio show. It was revolutionary. There were also guys from DEC streaming (via multicast on the MBone) their band sessions from the basement in Palo Alto in the early 90s.

     Doesn’t detract from the awesome write up. Just some Internet trivia that some of us old timers fondly recall.

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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 02:12:11 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Greem (Graeme. Not Graham!)

     @greem legends say there was even a Time Before Beyonce

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     Greem (Graeme. Not Graham!) (greem@cyberplace.social)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 02:12:13 JST Greem (Graeme. Not Graham!)

     in reply to

     @anildash Excellent piece, thanks.

     I'm old enough to remember The Time Before Rihanna 😁

   • Embed this notice
     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 02:13:24 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Roy

     @roy very welcome! I'm trying to make time to capture more of the stories that we'd want people in the industry to know.

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     Roy (roy@yoroy.eu)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 02:13:26 JST Roy

     in reply to

     @anildash yeah, seemed appropriate. Well done 😁 ! Thanks for writing this up in such depth.

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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 04:05:54 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Frederik Braun �

     @freddy lmao I just caught that, fixing now

   • Embed this notice
     Frederik Braun � (freddy@social.security.plumbing)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 04:05:55 JST Frederik Braun �

     in reply to

     @anildash Hey, cool post. The link to https://daringfireball.net/2004/03/introducing_markdown has an extra ] still. :)

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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 06:27:10 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Glenn Fleishman

     @glennf well, “supports” in the way that Apple always defines “support”.

   • Embed this notice
     Glenn Fleishman (glennf@zeppelin.flights)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 06:27:12 JST Glenn Fleishman

     in reply to

     @anildash I disagree that Apple finally supported Markdown since you can’t edit natively in Markdown. More like “allows import for conversion to rich text.”

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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 06:28:18 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Christian Kent   𝘊𝘒 :＼﹥

     @whophd yeah, that’s fair. I’m thinking more of the rumors-centric, more “cultural” commentary, if you know what I mean. I could have been more precise with the language there, I’ll agree.

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     Christian Kent   𝘊𝘒 :＼﹥ (whophd@ioc.exchange)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 06:28:19 JST Christian Kent   𝘊𝘒 :＼﹥

     in reply to

     @anildash When did John Siracusa begin his MacWorld epic reviews of new macOS releases haha … would’ve been then

     But anyway I’m not counting online sites of the paper magazines, in case that’s cheating

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     Christian Kent   𝘊𝘒 :＼﹥ (whophd@ioc.exchange)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 06:28:20 JST Christian Kent   𝘊𝘒 :＼﹥

     in reply to

     @anildash I’m probably taking this a little bit personally becuase I was in my early 20s and carving my reputation?

     ```
     back then, almost nobody was covering Apple regularly, let alone writing exclusively about the company. There was barely even an “tech news” scene online at all
     ```
     2002 tech news scene … Slashdot had already peaked and had regular posts begging others to try other sources … I had my daily (unhealthy?) habit opening my browser with Mac-specific news sites like Ric Ford’s Macintouch, MacOSRumors, MacRumors and TidBITS … for some reason I never latched onto 9to5Mac

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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 06:38:57 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Christian Kent   𝘊𝘒 :＼﹥

     @whophd yeah, that’s fair. I’m thinking more of the rumors-centric, more “cultural” commentary, if you know what I mean. I could have been more precise with the language there, I’ll agree.

   • Embed this notice
     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 06:48:57 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Glenn Fleishman

     @glennf well, “supports” in the way that Apple always defines “support”.

   • Embed this notice
     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 06:50:44 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Glenn Fleishman

     @glennf well, “supports” in the way that Apple always defines “support”.

   • Embed this notice
     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 07:13:05 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Christian Kent   𝘊𝘒 :＼﹥

     @whophd yeah, that’s fair. I’m thinking more of the rumors-centric, more “cultural” commentary, if you know what I mean. I could have been more precise with the language there, I’ll agree.

   • Embed this notice
     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 10:15:37 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Tony Finch

     @fanf There were certainly other community sites that supported it before then, but I'm sure Reddit helped contribute to its spread. I think Stack Overflow's adoption was really key, because it taught lots of coders, who then went on to build it into other sites. Same with GitHub.

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     Tony Finch (fanf@mendeddrum.org)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 10:15:38 JST Tony Finch

     in reply to

     @anildash was reddit the first popular website with markdown support? i had the vague idea aaron swartz added markdown to reddit when he was working on it, and it spread from there … or have i got the wrong impression?

   • Embed this notice
     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 10:18:30 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • MarvinFreeman

     @MarvinFreeman I think one common reason people feel that way is that WYSIWYG editors tend to be quite finicky or fiddly, and can break the formatting of the sites they're being used with. But if the editor you have works in the context you're using it, then that's great!

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     MarvinFreeman (marvinfreeman@mastodon.online)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 10:18:31 JST MarvinFreeman

     in reply to

     @anildash Apparently a troglodyte here, but I still don't understand why markdown is better than a wysiwyg html editor. I've learned markdown and use it, but markdown remains a PITA. (The OP is an example.)

     Not up for an argument, but I would like an explanation.

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     Anil Dash (anildash@me.dm)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 11:52:17 JST Anil Dash

     in reply to

     • Jessamyn

     @jessamyn lol I explained it because I can’t count the number of time I’ve heard people slap their forehead and say “ohhhh!” about the name

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     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 11:52:18 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     @anildash OK I have now read it. I literally never knew why Markdown was called that until today, AMA. RIP Dean and Aaron.

   • Embed this notice
     Jessamyn (jessamyn@glammr.us)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 11:52:19 JST Jessamyn

     in reply to

     @anildash Haven't even read it yet (though I will) but to me the "Just love markdown" people feel a bit like the "just use Linux people" in that they have a hard time believing it doesn't work for other people's use cases.