dnewton3 that's something I was thinking earlier, and even wrote a post about it before I caught myself. What I wrote and discarded was something as follows:
The media has softened from moisture and collapsed under the pressure of the leaf spring. I'm worried more about bypassing oil between the end-cap, ADBV and base plate, especially since that leaf spring has such a short travel
but caught myself because I momentarily forgot that the center tube is bearing and transferring the force from across the element.
I'm not worried about the 'folds' in the medium, as they are formed when the (cellulose) media is dry, akin to folding a dry piece of paper. The mechanical properties of the all-cellulose media is not degraded by oil or flow, but by exposure to moisture, which is why I said earlier that the oil is not to blame for deformation. If that media gets wet, then the folds are the first place to tear from flow alone (technically when delta-P exceeds the mechanical strength) as we've seen across the years.
Folding cellulose media into pleats is clearly not the problem (or virtually all oil filters would be problematic). Example, take a straight, never-folded piece of dry white office paper and drop a bit of oil on it, the paper remains relatively resistance to tearing, but drop some water on it and it will disintegrate very easily. This is why those cheap mediums always deform, they don't like short trips, cold weather service and condensation. I've seen filter deformation like this without even being installed, just stored in high humidity- one was a MANN filter. I wouldn't second guess the MANN filter's performance because of how much media area they include and the quality of such. There's nothing inherently wrong with cellulose filter media, but celly is the least tolerant to cheapness of quality (the paper), cheapness of quantity (area) and cheapness of manufacture (like careless pleat spacing, esp. when combined with the prior concerns.)
Purolators and the [Insert current stake-holder here] FRAMs along with their OEM-branded spin offs, are infamous for their commitment to that trifecta of cheapness.