iCloud Drive changes date modified for all uploaded files in folders from dropbox

See below for one of the previous posts; now closed.

I came across the same problem, when trying to say good bye to dropbox and move all my old files over to iCloud. When doing this on my PC, it would copy every file, but as it synced them, all time stamps would one by one be replaced with today's date and time. Not good!

The work around which worked for me:

• Copy all files from dropbox to a usb stick on your PC
• Take the usb stick and insert into your MacBook
• Copy files from usb stick to iCloud on the MacBook
• The files synced fine and showed the original time stamp on the MacBook and my iPad
• The PC had stopped syncing to the iCloud, but after a reboot and a cup of tea, everything was showing with the original time stamp going back to 2015 and earlier

Just to share my frustration, the other way works fine. So you can copy files from the iCloud to dropbox or one drive on your PC and the time stamp is carried over. Just not the other way round, for that I needed a USB stick. This digital world is so screwed up ..... and this is before AI even starts to second guess how our brains work!

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I've found several others with this issue, but I'm surprised there aren't more people wondering.

I uploaded folders and files to iCloud Drive, and iCloud Drive changed the modified dates of every folder to the date and time each was uploaded. Copies of the same folders NOT copied into iCloud Drive retain their existing dates, some of which are 15+ years old.

Apple might imagine that a 15-year-old folder maybe ought not to list at the top of dates modified when sorted.

As pointed out here (iCloud Drive changes 'Date Modified' for … - Apple Community), and repeated by me just now, using a script to change the date back fails because iCloud insists that changing the modified date of a directory equals modifying the directory, and changes the date modified BACK to the moment the change (to the date modified!) was made. Some engineer thought this was a good system. Users will not.

It'd be great if Apple or someone could fix or find a workaround for the issue. I'd like to switch from DropBox to iCloud Drive, but this is really giving me pause. If there's effectively no way to sort folders by date, that's a major handicap to this system.