Yes, I do get it...yet I still believe (STRONGLY) that we need to develop tools that let USERS control and filter their own content--and to not rely on someone else (e.g., relay operators) to do it.

Frankly, the functionality to "focus" a user's feed is really missing from Nostr currently...developing such a framework would help to solve both problems.

Decentralization is the primary core tenet of Nostr--and any "filtering" should be decentralized as well. 

 "we need to develop tools that let USERS control and filter their own content"

This is where we agree.  Ultimately, users ought to be able choose a stream of content to their liking (i.e. choose a set of relays) AND have the tools available to further curate that stream to suit their preferences with reasonable ease.  I see no reason to assume that work isn't being done to eventually achieve this.