My advice for anyone else coming across this:
Ignore the Apple validator and check if it is working on a device.
In my case, I also had the "cannot fetch app site association" on the Apple validation tool, but it worked anyway on my device (the link redirected to the app).
If it's not working, there are a lot of possible reasons in this SO post - https://stackoverflow.com/questions/32751225/ios-universal-links-are-not-opening-in-app.
The branch.io validator was also helpful for me.
Topic:
Safari & Web
SubTopic:
General
Tags: