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submitted 1 year ago by otl@lemmy.sdf.org to c/support@lemmy.world

I recently wrote a command-line utility lemmyverse to find communities indexed by Lemmy Explorer. A quick count shows almost 14%(!) of all communities indexed by lemmyverse are junk communities created by a single user @LMAO (reported here):

% lemmyverse . | wc -l
  30376
% lemmyverse enoweiooe | wc -l
   4206

Here's a python script, using no external dependencies, which uses Lemmy's HTTP API to delete all communities that @LMAO moderates:

#!/usr/bin/env python

import json
import urllib.parse
import urllib.request

baseurl = "https://lemmy.world"
username = "admin"
password = "password"

def login(user, passwd):
	url = baseurl+"/api/v3/user/login"
	body = urllib.parse.urlencode({
		"username_or_email": user,
		"password": passwd,
	})
	resp = urllib.request.urlopen(url, body.encode())
	j = json.load(resp)
	return j["jwt"]

def get_user(name):
	query = urllib.parse.urlencode({"username": name})
	resp = urllib.request.urlopen(baseurl+"/api/v3/user?"+query)
	return json.load(resp)

def delete_community(token, id):
	url = baseurl+"/api/v3/community/delete"
	params = {
		"auth": token,
		"community_id": id,
	}
	body = urllib.parse.urlencode(params)
	urllib.request.urlopen(url, body.encode())

token = login(username, password)
user = get_user("LMAO")
for community in user["moderates"]:
	id = community["community"]["id"]
	try:
		delete_community(token, id)
	except Exception as err:
		print("delete community id %d: %s" % (id, err))

Change username and password on lines 8 and 9 to suit.

Hope that helps! :) Thanks for the work you all put in to running this popular instance.

top 20 comments
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[-] Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 75 points 1 year ago

Gotta say, I'm loving the transparency in the fediverse

[-] otl@lemmy.sdf.org 13 points 1 year ago

I've managed to create an entire career (almost 10 years in now) out of the transparency in the tech community. Especially in open source. I'm hoping that paying it back like this inspires and provides the same opportunity to others!

[-] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 5 points 1 year ago

Stuff like this makes me really happy.

Sometimes, people call me naïve or overly optimistic for being hopeful for change, but I'm not expecting us to be able to fix all the problems; I'm excited because we're taking steps towards transmuting our current set of problems into a different set that will put us closer to a hypothetical ideal world. I can't imagine what this ideal world would look like, but I don't need to as long as I maintain a sense of "towards" and be clear on what values are worth striving towards.

It's helpful for my morale to remember that we're not building an ideal world from scratch, we're iterating upon what already exists. This means that people like you exist, and the domain knowledge you possess is far from a new thing, but will continue to grow and adapt as the rest of the world changes around it. There's a lot of smart and wise people working on making things better :)

(And I include myself in the "smart" category at least, it's just that protein structure isn't too relevant to social media (well... aside from the game Fold-it... or the fact that Meta and Google research is very relevant to BioInformatics ¯\(ツ)/¯ )

[-] otl@lemmy.sdf.org 3 points 1 year ago

This comment really spoke to me; thanks for replying.

we’re iterating upon what already exists

Absolutely. Do I think Lemmy, Python, ActivityPub or any of this web stuff is ideal? Personally: no. But that ability to make a little gesture like this, maybe have it accepted (or not!), and make it all a bit easier to work is worth any sort of personal compromise and frustration I feel. That optimism that you mention is really powerful.

[-] vd1n@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago

You mean two days ago? Or were there more attacks?

[-] dilligasatall@lemmy.world 49 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Is it a coincidence or is that the same person that was attacking lemmy a few weeks back for revenge on getting booted?

Edit: yup it is.

[-] cashsky@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Mental illness is a helluva thing

[-] frontporchtreat@lemmy.ca 31 points 1 year ago

I wonder how long it took to create those communities. one dude wasted so much time just to have all their work wiped out by a script.

[-] HeartyBeast@kbin.social 48 points 1 year ago

I wonder how long it took to create those communities.

.. about as long as it took LMAO to write a script to do it, at a guess.

[-] pyzn@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Depending on how easy the API is to use, that might be done in a couple of minutes

[-] freamon@feddit.nl 27 points 1 year ago

This is great work. I assume LMAO was the same guy as Angled - it'll be an 1.7K communities nixed if the script is used for him (so, 19% of the total!)

[-] youthinkyouknowme@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yup, that's the guy, says so in the profile bio.

[-] SheeEttin@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago

So we're going to need a captcha on community creation now? It's not the worst idea.

[-] otl@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 1 year ago

Some per-session rate-limiting by a HTTP reverse proxy could go a long way. Should any user be able to create a community via the API more than, say, once every 10 seconds? I'm not familiar with the rate limiting already built in to the Lemmy server, though.

[-] DrTautology@lemmy.world 18 points 1 year ago

Now that's some beautiful python code. Good work.

[-] Blaze@sh.itjust.works 8 points 1 year ago

Great news, thanks for the help!

[-] TCGM@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

Should probably put in a check for if the community has any content or not tbh. Low chance, but still an edge case.

[-] Kbobabob@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Why does this douche cannon deserve to have a community?

[-] MintyMint@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago

The ownership could be changed rather than deleting it entirely in this case.

[-] newthrowaway20@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

You should let him get to like 20k communities then run this.

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this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2023
202 points (100.0% liked)

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