To your first point: free-flowing information itself does not seem to be dangerous, rather the application of info (the use to which it is put) that can take forms which may be considered dangerous by some or many - a knife may be used to cut tomatoes or fingers and some may blame the knife as much as the person wielding it. Information can also simply be 'used' to inform and, arguably, informing ourselves is what we are doing with info all the time. An action may be triggered by one specific bit of info/data yet itself be a much more complex thing born of multiple info/data points, thus giving the superficial impression that this or that bit of info is 'dangerous'.

To your second point, I'll quote myself from the article and hope it clarifies my view of 'fact-checking':

Facebook, Youtube and other BigTech, as well as the mainstream traditional media and various influential national and trans-national bodies and organisations, have been taking action to prevent discussions of various topics and this is a huge understatement! There are 'fact checkers' who provide 'approved' and sanitised versions of what passes as 'news' along with the underlying message "trust us to filter your information for you as it is a very confusing world out there and you don't really have the tools to do it for yourself". One is not presented with the 'full picture' by any means. Informed consent, informed choice and all those other 'informed'-dependent activities naturally become compromised in such a system where confusion reigns and a subset is presented as if it were the 'whole'. The 'authority' of the system is stressed and trust in it encouraged at the expense of a more DYOR approach to information gathering, personal opinion and decision making.