Perhaps with something like B<...> or C<...> do in a text-only environment.

Hmm, both stars and quotes (*italic* and "code") seem more common than <> in urls ... and they're already used for emphasis

Certainly not with something that was indistinguishable from a missing or invalid format code.

But you see, stray angle brackets are perfectly valid in pod, but podchecker -w -w ... will warn you if you're interested

*** WARNING: 2 unescaped <> in paragraph at line 18 in file ...
[download]

And you will be warned about invalid formatting codes (even from pod2text), like

Around line 16:
    Deleting unknown formatting code R<>
[download]

I personally feel this is a mistake, its like a browser appending a list of html errors at the bottom of each page, after all, perldoc/pod2text/pod2html... aren't exactly author tools like podchecker/Pod::Checker, podtidy/Pod::Tidy, podlinkcheck/App::PodLinkCheck, podlint/Pod::POM, pod_cover/Pod::Coverage, Test::Pod, Test::Pod::Coverage, Test::XT

As far as I can tell, I'm following current documentation, which is in conflict with current behavior, as other responders have observed.

Yes, I concluded this also, same me Re^2: hyperlinks in pod :)

Oh look pod2cpanhtml/App::Pod2CpanHtml