Most People on Reddit and Slashdot do not use Markdown

In urging people to use Markdown format when it is available I must admit that only about 1% of people have ever used it. It is there but not a prominent feature of the experience on these sites. I think this is the case because most people who post nowadays are used to mobile devices whose designers have simply not chosen to make advanced features available.  Maybe when mobile device begin to look more like desktops of old and something like  a 40 line X 80 character text area becomes more common they will begin to realize that they have more choices.

But clearly most people don't know any better. Is the reason that the business model for social media sites as marketing platforms is intentionally designed to restrict what people can effectively say? Oh, I know that people will assert that social media does not practice censorship, but I think otherwise. If people whose main goal with their on-line presence is to market themselves, they are not looking to be engaged in political debates, and because of the limitations of the usual blog format, they react badly to distractions like that. The designers of the sites they use, such as Google+, know that and that is intentional.

I don't trust business people to protect my right to free speech, especially when they cater to people who not only don't care about it, but who want the one-way channel of a marketing scheme.