>> is the "too much text" really a problem?

Yes. Even though I read the entire article, the captions for the graphics combined with the graphics themselves provided such a clear, concise summary of good and bad examples for each bullet point that I immediately understood the meat of the detailed text surrounding it.

The graphics and accompanying captions in the article itself serve as a nice TL;DR which reinforces the author's earlier point of one way of fixing the "Too much text" problem:

...Instead of extensive “How this works” (consisting of heaps of text), make a simple graphic detailing the process...