“This website is free”, goes the common response to unhinged Twitter, now X, content. That may no longer be the case, according to Elon Musk. I don’t know what I’m going to do with all the spare time if it happens. It’ll be like lockdown all over again. Banana bread, anyone?

The lowdown

• 🛒 Instacart prices its IPO at $30 a share, at the top end of the range.

• 🛢️ Brent oil hits $95 as Saudi Arabia and Russia cut production.

• 🏦 Santander revamps its structure in a push to reach profit targets.

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Musk suggests X will go behind a paywall

When Elon Musk bought what was Twitter in 2022, he inherited a problem. The platform was burning through cash. In its last quarterly earnings report before the acquisition, Twitter reported a $344 million loss – about $4 million a day.

His first attempt was to introduce Blue, an $8 subscription service that offered an array of benefits including the famous blue tick. Now Musk may be going a step further. In a conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Musk said the social network is “moving to having a small monthly payment for use of the X system”.

Rather than talking about money, Musk’s rationale is that charging users is necessary to combat the “vast armies of bots”. Fighting bots was one of Musk’s key reasons for buying the company. Awkwardly, researchers recently found the problem is worse than ever. Only time will tell whether a cost of admission will keep X afloat or run it into the ground.

The content we're consuming today

• FT: Why don’t people leave bad jobs? ($)

• Yahoo Finance: Arm's debut isn't a barometer for the IPO market

• Bloomberg: The mission to create Europe’s battery hub, whatever the cost ($)

Off-balance sheet items

• If you’ve ever seen an Apple product launch, you’ll know what I mean by the fake texts they use to illustrate new features. Praise be, then, to this critical analysis of Apple’s fake texts through the ages.

The bottom line