The fast food model was always unsustainable without sacrificing quality even further and raising prices.

Not true. The people making 6 or 7 figures could all take a hit to their salaries and that would translate to lower prices for customers.

The problem is, why would they if they don't have to?

Wow, thank you so much. This solved it.

I'm honestly not that familiar with docker or lemmy, so I was just trying to follow the guide and look up issues as they arose.

I simply could not figure this out after hours of trying, so I decided to call in the cavalry. I was not disappointed.

That'd be a relief if that's the case.

I've been getting a bit demoralized trying to figure this out.

Yes, it looks like the supplied docker-compose.yml points to pgautoupgrade/pgautoupgrade:18-alpine for the postgres image.

Thank you, here it is.

x-logging: &default-logging
  driver: "json-file"
  options:
    max-size: "50m"
    max-file: "4"

services:
  proxy:
    image: nginx:1-alpine
    ports:
      # Listen for outside connections on port 10633. You can freely change the left-side
      # number to a different port, eg using port 80 if you don't need a reverse proxy.
      - "10633:8536"
    volumes:
      - ./nginx_internal.conf:/etc/nginx/nginx.conf:ro,Z
      - ./proxy_params:/etc/nginx/proxy_params:ro,Z
    restart: always
    logging: *default-logging
    depends_on:
      - pictrs
      - lemmy-ui

  lemmy:
    image: dessalines/lemmy:0.19.13
    hostname: lemmy
    restart: always
    logging: *default-logging
    environment:
      - RUST_LOG="warn"
    volumes:
      - ./lemmy.hjson:/config/config.hjson:Z
    depends_on:
      - postgres
      - pictrs

  lemmy-ui:
    image: dessalines/lemmy-ui:0.19.13
    environment:
      - LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_INTERNAL_HOST=lemmy:8536
      - LEMMY_UI_LEMMY_EXTERNAL_HOST=mylemmysite.com
      - LEMMY_UI_HTTPS=true
    volumes:
      - ./volumes/lemmy-ui/extra_themes:/app/extra_themes
    depends_on:
      - lemmy
    restart: always
    logging: *default-logging

  pictrs:
    image: asonix/pictrs:0.5.19
    # this needs to match the pictrs url in lemmy.hjson
    hostname: pictrs
    # we can set options to pictrs like this, here we set max. image size and forced format for conversion
    # entrypoint: /sbin/tini -- /usr/local/bin/pict-rs -p /mnt -m 4 --image-format webp
    environment:
      - PICTRS_OPENTELEMETRY_URL=http://otel:4137/
      - PICTRS__SERVER__API_KEY=passwordgoeshere
      - RUST_BACKTRACE=full
      - PICTRS__MEDIA__VIDEO__VIDEO_CODEC=vp9
      - PICTRS__MEDIA__ANIMATION__MAX_WIDTH=256
      - PICTRS__MEDIA__ANIMATION__MAX_HEIGHT=256
      - PICTRS__MEDIA__ANIMATION__MAX_FRAME_COUNT=400
    user: 991:991
    volumes:
      - ./volumes/pictrs:/mnt:Z
    restart: always
    logging: *default-logging

  postgres:
    image: pgautoupgrade/pgautoupgrade:18-alpine
    hostname: postgres
    environment:
      - POSTGRES_USER=lemmy
      - POSTGRES_PASSWORD=passwordgoeshere
      - POSTGRES_DB=lemmy
    shm_size: 1g
    volumes:
      - ./volumes/postgres:/var/lib/postgresql/data:Z
      - ./customPostgresql.conf:/etc/postgresql.conf
    restart: always
    logging: *default-logging

  postfix:
    image: mwader/postfix-relay
    environment:
      - POSTFIX_myhostname=mylemmysite.com
    restart: "always"
    logging: *default-logging