diff --git a/app/lib/formatter.rb b/app/lib/formatter.rb
index e7bb0743d0..251bb9bbe5 100644
--- a/app/lib/formatter.rb
+++ b/app/lib/formatter.rb
@@ -4,6 +4,16 @@ require 'singleton'
 require_relative './sanitize_config'
 
 class HTMLRenderer < Redcarpet::Render::HTML
+  def preprocess(document)
+    # Prevent markdown lists from being parsed as markdown
+    # Rich text lists not only play with the formatting funny, but also get completely obliterated when federating
+    # to instances that don't do rich test
+    #
+    # This is a gross way to do it but I couldn't find anything better
+    # It simply finds anything at the start of a line that would be parsed as a list and escapes it with backslashes
+    document.gsub(/^(\s*)(-|\+|\*) /, '\1\\\\\2 ').gsub(/^(\s*\d+)\. /, '\1\. ')
+  end
+
   def block_code(code, language)
     "<pre><code>#{encode(code).gsub("\n", "<br/>")}</code></pre>"
   end