Walled Gardens Can Kill

Posted by steelbrain 4/18/2025

149 points | 133 commentspage 3

dzonga 4/18/2025|

it's not just apple - with google once you change countries you've to wait a year to change again.

steelbrain 4/18/2025|

With Google, as another posted has pointed out, you can use services like apkpure and grab the apk and install it directly, thereby bypassing such restrictions

teekert 4/18/2025||

I guess, anything can kill? Is it unimaginable that a non-walled garden may kill? In some way?

wiseowise 4/18/2025||

I'm sure horde of Apple fanatics and useful idiots will gladly throw your wife under the bus, because:

* Just buy an Android if you don't like it

* This is not the Apple way

* My grandma has much better experience this way, because I don't have to some made up reason why this is impossible on Android

* Green bubble

* Much more secure this way

* I don't like when someone has different use case than I do

* It would be even worse on Android

* Think of the kids

Did I forget something?

mcv 4/19/2025||

Yes, walled gardens are bad, but in this case it was the combination of walled garden, region restrictions for vital health info, conflicting region restrictions, health info not being available outside the app, and a healthcare system that itself is completely broken. Each of these is stupid and dangerous, and if even one of them hadn't been the case, the author wouldn't have had this problem.

It's a whole ecosystem of enshittification.

mrangle 4/18/2025||

The author wants us to believe that their insurance provider reduces their customer service success to the single factor of whether or not someone has an Android phone?

Unmitigated bs.

Use your web browser and find an in-network hospital via the website. Like a person.

This article stretches the limits of credibility.

Garbage premise and clickbait title.

I could continue on to talk about the "walled garden" issue, but I don't think that step is even warranted given the facts.

theandrewbailey 4/18/2025||

Is it just me, or is this blog's text a bit too low contrast and hard to read?

steelbrain 4/18/2025|

Hello! Are you reading this on a phone/tablet? I tweaked it around a bit to make it soft/comfortable to read but may have gone too far.

Edit: Made it a bit darker, hopefully its easier to read now.

theandrewbailey 4/18/2025||

Yes, tablet right now. Just checked again, much better, thanks!

photochemsyn 4/18/2025||

Imagine if police and fire emergency services operated like this - you had to get private fire and police insurance, and if your home was on fire you would need to have an app on your phone telling you which fire departments were 'in-network' in order to ensure you weren't accidentally bankrupted (if the out-of-network service would even respond, once they checked your economic credit score).

The real takeaway here should be that life-or-death outcomes should never depend on some buggy app installed on your phone and maintained by a for-profit company that's more interested in protecting shareholder profits and executive salaries than in providing the critical service in question.

systemswizard 4/18/2025||

Imagine not trying to use their website… apps are cancer

scarface_74 4/18/2025||

I find it hard to believe that the insurance provider didn’t have a website.

steelbrain 4/18/2025||

Here's the company (that manages the "frontend") for ours and a bunch of other insurance companies: https://www.nextcarehealth.com/

I couldn't find their Lumi / web based login. Maybe you can help me find it!

valicord 4/18/2025|||

No idea how you're supposed to get there (I only found it with Google) but: https://www.nextcarehealth.com/healthcare-network

scarface_74 4/18/2025||

Thst still takes you to a QR code to download the app if you are on mobile

valicord 4/18/2025||

Not for me (chrome on android)

JustExAWS 4/18/2025|||

Hamburger menu -> Login

steelbrain 4/18/2025||

The login button redirects you to a page with a QR code for the application: https://www.nextcarehealth.com/download-lumi/

Or maybe I'm missing something, did you actually find a Login form there?

JustExAWS 4/18/2025||

My bad. I have never seen anything so user hostile in my life. It looks like the only way that it doesn’t force you to use the app is if you go to the website from a computer. Requesting desktop site doesn’t do it and even using a third party browser that lets you change the user agent will still force you to use the app on mobile.

5- 4/18/2025||

plenty of mobile-only banks here in (former?) europe. losing access to a bank account might be as critical as to an insurance one.

JustExAWS 4/18/2025||

You mean with the way that the EU loves to regulate everything, they don’t regulate this?

There isn’t a bank that I’m aware of that is app only in the US. The one thing you can’t do from some bank websites is deposit a check. Which makes no sense either since you have been able to capture photos from web pages in iOS forever.

geor9e 4/18/2025|

The author never names the insurance company. I can't help but wonder if it's because they later realized there was a web app the whole time, and the ios/android apps were entirely optional.

hyperman1 4/19/2025|

Possibly. But people, in an emergency, do what they know best. You can prepare for some emergencies, but not all.

I know about someone having a heart attack, and people around him panicking and not knowing the emergency phone number 112

geor9e 4/19/2025||

I'd never criticize someone's reaction during an emergency. I act dumb all the time, but I admit it later. My issue is this author is riding their viral headline about an anonymous evil insurer in cahoots with apple to kill, but won't name them for the factcheckers. You can rack your brain for all the possible reasons for this, but the Occam's Razor obvious one is that the insurer is actually innocent. But that would cause the torch-wielding mob to lose all interest in this story, if they found out there was a website the whole time. So the author will never name the insurer. I don't respect incomplete stories. Lie by omission. For attention.