Farmer was CEO of Parler, a social media site that billed itself as a "neutral town square", and a free-speech alternative to other social media apps. In an interview with The New York Times, Farmer said:
I mean, for example, defamatory content, sexualization of minors, nudity and pornography, indecency involving violence, fraud, IP theft, doxxing, incitement to violence, all of that stuff is removed because that’s against our guidelines. Most of it’s illegal. You can’t shout fire in a crowded room. Now, when it comes to other speech, do I think, personally — now, this is kind of the nexus for the whole debate. Do I think personally it should be taken down? Well, the reality is, is that, at any point that I am making a judgment as to what should and shouldn’t be allowed in terms of speech, you’ve hit the nail on the head. That’s where the whole free speech element rests, and kind of rises and falls, if you like. I don’t think that I have the power. I don’t think that any human being has the power to decide what another human being should think. I think that it’s up to other people to decide what they want to think. And I think the only way you defeat a bad idea is by showing it a good idea. Obviously, in societies where they do try and censor speech, the opposite viewpoint is normally exactly what then takes root and grows like wildfire. Because, of course, as soon as you try to shut down something, people are naturally drawn to it. It’s a bit like — not to get too theological, but “The Da Vinci Code” was on the Catholic Church’s list of banned books. Well, of course, that did nothing more for it than sell millions of books because suddenly everyone wants to read about it. As soon as you start to shut down conversations, people get interested.
