The linked article showcases a disaster of the text previewer in the stock Lemmy client. It makes sense that linefeeds would be stripped to some extent, but when the content relies on a linebreak for every line because it’s important for formatting, it’s a disaster when you have half a screen of text.

The fix: the preview code should count the number of linefeeds it removes. If it removes more than ~4 or so linefeeds, it should be clear that it’s not dealing with normal sized paragraphs. In this case, it should only show a few lines (with linefeeds) and have a spoiler or expansion option.

Another simpler fix: have a “suppress preview” tickbox so an author can manually clear a bad preview box.