This is total BS. Theories are dangerous. If they weren't, nobody would ever care about them. They are dangerous because they can be inspiring, sometimes inspiring action. You can say you don't want to ban the theory, only the actions, and that's a legitimate position. It reduces you to post-facto behavior only, however (which may be just fine for you). Many societies and people within them over time have not been fine with that. What they've done about it varies, from draconian bans on theories and punishment for those advocating them, to much milder versions such as "you can no longer use the services of a private company to talk about your ideas".

The general population is not equipped with enough information or enough time to meaningfully distinguish between bullshit and non-bullshit. Just yesterday, there was a post about a new long article/paper/publication by Stephen Wolfram, and the comments there made it clear that even among the academic community relevant to what he writes about, there's widespread disagreement about whether he's an egotistical empty vessel or the second coming of Einstein and Newton's lovechild (with a possible bias towards the former).

I'm all for elevating the agency and capabilities of "the general population", but pretending that a random discoverer of a video on self-use of CRISPR is going to be able to sensibly identify what may be of value and what may be dangerous is just incredibly naive.

And note: the problems do not arise with the general member of the public who decides to do their own deep dive after coming across an idea. If that was the universal response to encountering unfamiliar or controversial ideas, we might be in good shape. The problem is that most people have neither the time nor the inclination to do this, and so stuff just ends up floating around in their impressions of the world, unresolved, but perhaps casting doubt on stuff that is almost certainly true (or false).