Media file changes no longer trigger updated/modified statuses.

[sbeaney]

In older versions of WP, when media files like PDFs were updated it would trigger an event that could be listened to and acted upon by plugins.

In the current version of WP (6.2.2) if a user changes the uploaded date or otherwise modifies a media file's properties, the change is no longer picked up by audit trail plugins like WP Activity Log, nor is it seen as an update to a "post".

Plugins that have "Clear cache whenever a post or page is updated" functionality are now broken when it comes to media file changes.

For instance, if a site is using Sucuri's WAF and caching plugin as well as the Enable Media Replace plugin, when a user replaces a media file with a new one it doesn't trigger Sucuri's cache clearing functionality anymore. I have reviewed both Enable Media Replace and Sucuri's plugins to make sure neither of them are at fault for breaking this functionality. Additionally, neither Sucuri nor WP Activity Log pick up the changes to display in their activity logs.

I do not know if media file post types were explicitly excluded from using the process pages and posts use to broadcast changes, but this new behavior is only present in the most recent version(s) of WP and is a bug if this wasn't a planned change.