I used the same until I recently hit a network that allowed that site but was captive for everything else. No idea what would inspire that configuration.
iOS won't consider itself connected to a WiFi network until it can hit that domain and get the response it expects, but some networks want you to be connected even though they don't actually give you full internet access. For example, plane wifi networks where you can stream video to your device but would have to pay for actual internet. So those networks will allow the connection for that site and other captive detectors but intercept actual connection attempts.
Sorry, I understand all of that. This was not one of those situations. I could not get to any place on the network because they had a captive portal but iOS didn’t know to open it because they allowed captive.apple.com through. After navigating to neverssl.com I was properly redirected to the captive portal and able to agree to whatever guest WiFi terms were available.
Whyyyyy... ugh that’s so dumb. That is just someone shooting themselves in the foot for no reason, or maybe some ex employee did something silly on the way out.
