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Libre relay proved that it only takes a few nodes and one mining pool willing to bypass filters to evade filtering. The only real way to stop this is to change Bitcoin consensus rules. Running knots is a LARP for people to signal that they don't like "spam". It doesn't prevent anything. Recent <1sat/VB transactions also another example of this.

It matters and it's an important signal the nodes send to the miners about what is acceptable and what is shunned, it's the cultural core of the network. Miners can ignore it but will be punished by degraded block relay speed and risk losing money due to orphaned blocks. It's an amazing power balance. Besides that, your node is your sovereign territory and people calling it a LARP, if you enforce your own mempool policy, don't get that point. It's not only about the bloat, you provide a ressource, free of charge, to the network, so you can and must enforce policy how you wish it beeing used. I think most bitcoin node runners want to participate in monetary transaction relay and not arbitrary data relay. Atleast I do and that's why I filter out non standard tx. Another aspect is, that if you open up your node to freely relay unmoderated arbitrary data, this can lead to severe legal consequences, for no benefit whatsoever for you personally. So the filters are also a form of self protection, because the big miners for sure will filter or do you belive a stock traded company will mine CSAM into the chain? This hole debate is such a waste of people's time, nobody wants it, has no benefit and exposes bitcoin node runners to legal and regulatory attacks, which in return make node running less attractive for normal plebs and reduce the decentralization of the network by that. Finally 99% of the transaction that make it into the chain adhere and respect the filters, coincidence or do filters and node policy work?

Your individual mempool policy is irrelevant if it still gets mined. Leave the CSAM FUD out of it. So what if you don't relay it (you are still caching it) but it still lands up on your node anyway when the transaction is mined. Miners don't care about your signal, they are trying to make a profit. They will mine the most profitable, valid transactions and that incentive is what makes Bitcoin work as permissionless, censor resistant money. The ONLY way to prevent this activity is to fork and make these transactions invalid. I'm not telling you not to run knots. Do what you like. Just don't think that you are preventing anything. You're not. Just virtue signaling.