I believe that they were talking specifically about the programs which create orders which are never fulfulled. That way their programs creating real trades have an advantage (since they are running on servers located closer to the exchanges).
Bear in mind the exchanges aren't stupid, Nasdaq at least has instituted a penalty system for sending a bajillion orders and not actually trading [0]. One may certainly quibble with the exact rates and penalties but this is a thing that exists.
It makes a lot of sense to penalize that kind of behavior. Deliberately slowing down the quote feed or cancelling all your trades seems to be intended as a denial of service attack on your competitors.
