dogmike / secretlounge-ng

A bot for Telegram that acts like a pseudonymous group chat.

secretlounge-ng

Rewrite of secretlounge, a bot to make an anonymous group chat on Telegram. Further rewritten for furry purposes. This version is pseudonymous instead of anonymous (though it still supports anonymous mode).

@BotFather Setup

1. Message @BotFather
2. Say "/newbot"
3. Give it a name and an ID
4. Remember to eventually set the userpic and the about text.
5. /setprivacy: enabled
6. /setjoingroups: disabled
7. /setcommands: paste the command list below

Full Command list

start - Join the chat (start receiving messages)
stop - Leave the chat (stop receiving messages)
users - Find out how many users are in the chat
info - Get info about your account
exposeto - Send your real username to someone else
tsign - Sign a message with your tripcode
t - Alias of tsign
motd - Show the welcome message
help - Show the help message
version - Get version & source code of this bot
modhelp - Show commands available to moderators
adminhelp - Show commands available to admins
toggledebug - Toggle debug mode (sends back all messages to you)
togglekarma - Toggle karma notifications
tripcode - Show or set a tripcode for your messages
tripcodetoggle - Toggle tripcode to be on by default on messages

(By default, tripcodetoggle is turned off in config.)

(There are other commands, but they're part of /modhelp and /adminhelp)

Trimmed Command List for ease of use

start - Join the chat (start receiving messages)
stop - Leave the chat (stop receiving messages)
users - Find out how many users are in the chat
exposeto - Send your real username to someone else
motd - Show the welcome message
tripcode - Show or set a tripcode for your messages

Running on a server

1. You should either know this part, or get some general experience. Take a course! SSH, SFTP, and so on. Make sure you create a new user account to run the bots.
2. Setup: You might need to sudo apt-get update and then sudo apt-get install python3-pip. Use pip3 to install requirements.txt.
3. Copy default configuration from config.yaml.example to bot1/config.yaml. Edit bot1/config.yaml and paste in your bot key from BotFather.
4. Turn the python file into a program: sudo chmod 755 secretlounge-ng.
5. You'll want to run it on the server and close the SSH window, so use sudo apt-get install screen.

Running:

1. screen -dmS bot1 where 'bot1' can be any name you choose.
2. ./secretlounge-ng -c bot1/config.yaml
3. On your keyboard, press Ctrl + A, then press D to leave that screen.
4. You can now exit and close your session

Shutting it down:

1. screen -Dr bot1 to resume
2. On your keyboard, press Ctrl + C to stop the program

Create another bot

1. Make a bot2 directory and copy config.yaml.example to bot2/config.yaml
2. Edit bot2/config.yaml and paste in your new bot key from BotFather. Also change 'bot1' to 'bot2' on the database line.
3. screen -dmS bot2
4. When you start secretlounge-ng, use the -c flag: ./secretlounge-ng -c bot2/config.yaml

Security

You should harden your server by doing a few other things:

• Disable SSH for root
• Close most of the ports. Change defaults for SSH and SFTP

FAQ

1. How do I ban/unban/whitelist/unwhitelist/etc a user?

Generally speaking, you should reply to a user's message to perform an action on them. Reply to one of their messages with /ban just because or /info or /warn. Check out the /modhelp and /adminhelp commands.

Sometimes you can't access one of their messages. To whitelist a new user, unban someone who has no recent messages, or stuff like that, you can just use commands like /whitelist or /unban or /demote to show an anonymized list.

You can paste in their tripcode or obfuscated ID. For example, /mod someone!d30I83hFJ2 will find that person and make them a moderator. Admins can also search by username or id, but be careful never to accidentally send that to everyone by forgetting the / at the start of your command. That sensitive data will be deleted automatically from your chat window.

2. What is the suggested setup to run multiple bots?

The administrative scripts support a structure like the following where each bot has its' own subdirectory:

secretlounge folder
\-- bot1
  \-- db.sqlite
  \-- config.yaml
\-- bot2
  \-- db.sqlite
  \-- config.yaml
\-- ...
\-- README.md
\-- secretlounge-ng