diff --git a/Cargo.toml b/Cargo.toml
index 6e6cefb..8f418b5 100644
--- a/Cargo.toml
+++ b/Cargo.toml
@@ -122,6 +122,9 @@ argon2 = "0.5"
 # Lightweight regex
 regex-lite = "0.1"
 
+# HTML entity decoding
+html-escape = "0.2"
+
 # Testing
 tokio-test = "0.4"
 tempfile = "3"
diff --git a/crates/openfang-channels/Cargo.toml b/crates/openfang-channels/Cargo.toml
index 3e8e452..043f970 100644
--- a/crates/openfang-channels/Cargo.toml
+++ b/crates/openfang-channels/Cargo.toml
@@ -26,6 +26,7 @@ hmac = { workspace = true }
 sha2 = { workspace = true }
 base64 = { workspace = true }
 hex = { workspace = true }
+html-escape = { workspace = true }
 
 [dev-dependencies]
 tokio-test = { workspace = true }
diff --git a/crates/openfang-channels/src/mastodon.rs b/crates/openfang-channels/src/mastodon.rs
index 21b9c42..9960b36 100644
--- a/crates/openfang-channels/src/mastodon.rs
+++ b/crates/openfang-channels/src/mastodon.rs
@@ -261,45 +261,42 @@ fn parse_mastodon_notification(
     })
 }
 
-/// Simple HTML tag stripper for Mastodon status content.
-///
-/// Mastodon returns HTML in status content. This strips tags and decodes
-/// common HTML entities. For production, consider a proper HTML sanitizer.
+/// Strip HTML tags and decode entities from Mastodon status content.
 fn strip_html_tags(html: &str) -> String {
     let mut result = String::with_capacity(html.len());
     let mut in_tag = false;
+    let mut tag_buf = String::new();
 
     for ch in html.chars() {
         match ch {
             '<' => {
                 in_tag = true;
-                // Check if this is a <br> or </p> — insert newline
-                if html[result.len()..].starts_with("<br")
-                    || html[result.len()..].starts_with("</p")
+                tag_buf.clear();
+            }
+            '>' if in_tag => {
+                in_tag = false;
+                // Insert newline for block-level tags
+                let tag_lower = tag_buf.to_lowercase();
+                if tag_lower.starts_with("br")
+                    || tag_lower.starts_with("/p")
+                    || tag_lower.starts_with("/div")
+                    || tag_lower.starts_with("/li")
                 {
                     result.push('\n');
                 }
             }
-            '>' => {
-                in_tag = false;
+            _ if in_tag => {
+                tag_buf.push(ch);
             }
-            _ if !in_tag => {
+            _ => {
                 result.push(ch);
             }
-            _ => {}
         }
     }
 
-    // Decode common HTML entities
-    result
-        .replace("&amp;", "&")
-        .replace("&lt;", "<")
-        .replace("&gt;", ">")
-        .replace("&quot;", "\"")
-        .replace("&#39;", "'")
-        .replace("&apos;", "'")
-        .trim()
-        .to_string()
+    // Decode HTML entities using html_escape crate
+    let decoded = html_escape::decode_html_entities(&result);
+    decoded.trim().to_string()
 }
 
 #[async_trait]
@@ -639,6 +636,41 @@ mod tests {
         assert!(parse_mastodon_notification(&notif, "acct-999").is_none());
     }
 
+    #[test]
+    fn strip_html_handles_emoji_without_panic() {
+        // This crashes the current implementation because emoji are multi-byte
+        let html = "<p>Hello 🦀 world</p>";
+        let result = strip_html_tags(html);
+        assert!(result.contains("Hello"));
+        assert!(result.contains("🦀"));
+        assert!(result.contains("world"));
+        assert!(!result.contains("<p>"));
+    }
+
+    #[test]
+    fn strip_html_handles_cjk_without_panic() {
+        let html = "<p>こんにちは<br>世界</p>";
+        let result = strip_html_tags(html);
+        assert!(result.contains("こんにちは"));
+        assert!(result.contains("世界"));
+    }
+
+    #[test]
+    fn strip_html_decodes_numeric_entities() {
+        let html = "curly&#8217;s &amp; &#x2019;";
+        let result = strip_html_tags(html);
+        assert!(result.contains("&"), "Should decode &amp;");
+        // Numeric entities should at least not crash
+        assert!(!result.contains("&#8217;") || result.contains("\u{2019}"));
+    }
+
+    #[test]
+    fn strip_html_basic_tags() {
+        let html = "<p>Hello <b>world</b></p>";
+        let result = strip_html_tags(html);
+        assert_eq!(result.trim(), "Hello world");
+    }
+
     #[test]
     fn test_parse_mastodon_notification_visibility() {
         let notif = serde_json::json!({