Don't think this is really that clickbaity - the typo amount accounted to 32B, and the outrage caused by that non-existent 32B lead to riots in which people died, in other words, deadly riots.
sometimes things are legitimately outrageous and worthy of an emotionally charged headline.
It is clickbaity. There was no "typo" (Pepsi said it was a "system error") and there was nothing that cost them $32B. The only true parts of the headline is "Pepsi" and "caused deadly riots", which I agree with you, is outrageous and should never have happened. But we don't have to lie about the content of a story in order to make this outrageous, it's already outrageous enough with the facts.
If it was only $20M, they probably just would have paid it, avoiding riots. What caused riots was their unwillingness/inability to pay the $32B they had inadvertantly promised.
I think the $32B is appropriate in the headline, it's the number that they accidentally promised, and could not deliver on, causing the riots.
But yes, the headline is written in a way to attract clicks, as all headlines are these days. I might have written it slightly differently. I don't think it's especially misleading.
It's not a lie though. All the title says is $32B of wealth was accidentally advertised (in this case, prize money based on numbers in a bottle caps). The headline doesn't say it cost Pepsi that amount, it just says the typo (ok, that bit isn't strictly accurate) was for the amount of $32B. A typo isn't the same thing as a payment.
Anecdotally the article was pretty much what I expected from the title: a large amount of wealth was accidentally promised (I assumed by physical property worth $32B and where the quantity was accidentally an order of magnitude more) and Pepsi, like all successful businesses, wormed out of delivering. As it turns out the story was more absurd than the headline lead me to believe but largely it was accurate to my assumptions based on the title.
Moving on from the title: this article did make me wonder what would have happened to the Philippine economy had Pepsi paid out (assuming they had the money to do so). With 800,000 people suddenly winning enough to buy a luxury house, I bet that would have caused house prices to rise massively and likely did all sorts of other massively disruptive things to the economy. Any other theories on this "whatif" scenario?
Pepsi's typo didn't cause 32B of loss to them, but by some measure, there was a tiny, brief window where the country thought it was 32B richer. And this was before the extensive use of the internet, so it probably took weeks for people to discover that they shouldn't have bought that car/house/whatever.
So yes, Pepsi's typo didn't cost them 32B, but 32B of economic value was instantaneously created, and then, after some time, destroyed.
Was its total economic cost 32B? No, but was 32B a reasonable number to state? Sure. Pepsi's 20MM mistake over 32B caused riots seems a lot more wordy, no?
I mean, I don't like Pepsi and understand people being pissed, but going out to protest with hundreds of other 'winners' when its obvious this must be a big mistake is pretty ridiculous. The fact that Pepsi regained market share only shows that its easier for people to bust shit up then boycott a soft drink.
sometimes things are legitimately outrageous and worthy of an emotionally charged headline.