[tomtung]

Totally agree. There's an inherent tension between protecting the freedom of speech and the potential harm that speech might cause. The current incentive structure motivates people to say the most click-baity outlandish things without worrying about any of the consequences. Fact-checking can never catch up with all the crazy sh!t people come up with. That's why censorship feels like a tempting "easy way out" for combating misinformation.

Maybe one mitigation is to make public figure / media accountable to the avoidable damage their speech end up causing? E.g., if I listen to your anti-vax radio program and consequently decide not to get vaccinated, before catching the disease and dying, then my family can sue you for damage as long as it can established that you have purposefully misled / failed to assess the potential harm.

After a few class-action lawsuits like this, public figure & media will probably be more careful when they want to spread misinformation.