The new title omits the interesting part, which is that the refrigerator refuses to use filters wihtout the RFID chip.

I would say that's implied, no? The overwhelming majority of IoT threads are about this kind of situation. For example, the inkjet cartridge thread linked elsewhere in this discussion.

I probably should have been able to guess, but it wasn't clear to me! I clicked this thread thinking "uh, that's weird, what does the chip actually do?"

Ok, since there are two of you there are probably a lot of you, so I've added the extra phrase above. Thanks!