No joke, but this was shared today as Upscaled to 4K (click to view it in full 2160p). 😂 😂 😂 What are people thinking when they are creating and sharing garbage like this?
To close the loop on this, switching from "Hybrid" to "V1" solved both problems. The padding files are no longer in the file list and a user who was not able to use a previous torrent file was able to use a new file I created with the modified setting.