If you run an open gateway, people can indeed request content via your gateway unless you have explicitly blacklisted it.

But if you run just a node, everything that is on the node is there because either you have added it or you have explicitly requested it.

IPFS is not like freenet or other systems that shard data over all participants.

>You can’t possibly hand approve everything so I’m sure the vast majority of node runners auto approve stuff and perhaps share some (non decentralized) black lists.

This obviously hasn't been the case for bittorrent, so I don't know why you would assume that would be the case for IPFS. Even ignoring the legal risk of blindly re-hosting whatever illegal bootleg-ISIS-child-porn-malware.exe on the net, the use of a blacklist isn't sybil proof so you just get bogged down with spam by the first attacker and run out of disk space.

Nothing gets on to your computer that you don't ask for.

I'm not sure how you are imagining IPFS works.