The important lesson brands can learn from all the problems at the New York-Dublin Portal

Branded is a weekly column devoted to the intersection of marketing, business, design, and culture. Benediktas Gylys, a Lithuanian artist and entrepreneur, had an optimistic vision for a technology designed to connect people. And it worked perfectly—until actual people started using it. Then it had to be redesigned to thwart the various ways actual people had abused it. That’s the story of the Portal, a project connecting New York City and Dublin with big, public video screens linked...