In case you are also running some older WordPress multisites and having issues where images have disappeared after the 6.8 update, I’m re-publishing what I found as a temporary solution here.
You’ll likely see 500 errors in the console and fatal errors if you to the actual image URL. You will see the images if you look in a file manager or via FTP etc. They are there.
So the temporary fix is to go to root directory for the WP install and then go to wp-includes/ms-files.php
Comment out lines 23 through 26 like you see below and things will work.
// if ( ! is_super_admin() && ( '1' === $current_blog->archived || '1' === $current_blog->spam || '1' === $current_blog->deleted ) ) {
// status_header( 404 );
// die( '404 — File not found.' );
// }
This will be over-written on any update but hopefully it will be fixed by then.