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I don't understand why they would chose markdown instead of a true WYSIWYG input. The website post input already uses Draft.js, which is the editor that also powers the Notes product. All the pieces are there.

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WYSIWYG is kinda difficult for developers to control the allowed HTML part as it can generate a lot of gibberish and null characters. The same goes with contenteditable too. The good thing is, if you have Markdown, you can export it to HTML, text, doc, PDF, or any other format.

Draft.js doesn't use the native browser content editable behaviour. It ensures that only valid markup can be generated: all text exists in a single block level element (p, h1, h2, li, blockquote) and then inline text can have an number of a developer-defined formatting options applied (emphasis, bold, links).

It doesn't have the compatibility problems and ambiguity that markdown suffers from.

It is WYSIWYG. I'm not sure why the article mentions markdown in the title, because the only clue about using markdown behind the scenes is that somebody found a "markdown help" pop-up buried in the code...

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