We did indeed suffer a spam attack done by a single person.
You can't respond with filters right away. The appropriate filters were implemented with the next node release and they were very successful. You can see the results at cesspool.lol
You could also have less noise in a restaurant by strangling the person who makes the most noise and laughs the hardest, and it would have results! You could also not call that murder or strangling but 'filtering' the noise level for the rest of the customers, it would still be murder by strangling at the end of the day though.
It is however understandable that the murderer would not consider their own action to be a murder as it was always about simply filtering the noise, just like you can not get around the fact that what you are praising is actually Censorship, hoping that it some day ends up on a Censorship resistant Blockchain.
Enjoy your censored Shit Coin losing purchasing power faster than Fiat!