Additional features, settings, or issues not covered by specific Microsoft Teams categories
"What I don't understand is why the previous thread was closed with so many people over years complaining of the same problem."
Its because they know this will never be addressed. Microsoft has decided, for whatever reason, this is the way things are going to work. Annoying features no one asked for, forced use of emojis, disabling the "back" button and the Copy/Paste function on this site, not letting you edit comments, Once Microsoft does this they will refuse to change, and they will refuse to explain why it works this way.
The automatic conversion of text into emoticons is the one that gets me. They have this massive list of emoticons and if you place two symbols next to each other that happen to match, they;ll turn into an emoticon. Always. You can't disable it. You can mitigate it by using rich text editor every single time you type anything. They of course refuse to explain why they won't just add a toggle.
This is probably the major reason Skype and Teams are becoming less popular. Turns out not having basic features every other program has had for decades is a bad idea.