The point wasn't just that Google has to handle spam, but also that they are stuck dealing with it even as they create/fund much of it ... and that their "solutions" for round 1 leave unforeseen exploit in round 2 or 3.

To out it as an equation...

increased weight on domain authority + rel nofollow + premium adsense feeds = Content farm problem

Their latest update left a couple other big exploits open as well.

As far as faulting using an infographic as a format goes, people are more receptive to them than textual articles.

Sure some people do exploitative crap about total junk & have spammy storyboards put together by total strangers for $20, but the above was a storyboard that came from someone who has watched how search has evolved over the past ~ decade, with literally 20,000+ hours of experience in the SEO game.

I could write a 9000+ word article like http://www.seobook.com/relevancy/ but generally the market is more receptive toward infographics. As a marketer it is generally easier to go with human nature than to try to fight it. That is marketing 101 ;)

And since people do exploit infographics for links, sure it can seem cutting edge to label anything in an infographic as 'spam' (or some such), but if you could find me another online document that has described everything on that page with better clarity & in a way that is easier to consumer faster I would be quite surprised.