I recently visited a PokeStop in Dobbs Ferry, NY which had a what looked like HTML or XML tags in its description:
I'm using iPhone 6, app version 0.29.3. Is the app not escaping these tags properly? Is this a known issue? I've also opened a support ticket with Niantic.
Best Answer
Pokemon GO does not have an HTML parser inside their description management code.
The reason you are seeing these tags is because Ingress (used to) supports HTML tags in Portal descriptions, which is where Pokemon GO is pulling this data from.
HTML tags are likely ignored entirely as a catch-all to prevent any form of XSS or "annoying" formatting.