UK stamps must have a Datamatrix barcode on them to stop fakes

I saw a story on Hacker News about people getting fined 5 quid in the UK for receiving (yes, receiving!) mail with counterfeit stamps, which is causing concern as these people got their stamps from Royal Mail as part of a program to swap your old stamps for new stamps that have QR codes on them. It's unknown if fake stamps got in the legit supply chain or Royal Mail's scanners are claiming legit stamps as fake. I didn't know the UK had stamps with QR codes on them, so I wondered what the code is for and discovered it's not a QR code, but a Datamatrix and it contains all sorts of info, including a supply chain ID (to combat rampant counterfeiting) and even a URL that if you scan it, can show videos - like Shaun the Sheep. Some bullshit about trying to get stamps to appeal to a younger generation?? That then lead me to this Guardian story from 2022 about people upset with the Datamatrix code stamps, who claim the whole point of their letter writing "was to give us a break from having to be engaged with digital content". That rabbit hole sucked up almost an hour of my life and I want to finish writing today's issue ASAP so I can get back into it.