The bad side from centralized exchange site was the transparency. All of funds were not transparent and these funds kept in the hot wallets which owned by the exchange site and so once the platform faces a big problem like that and then the owner can run away with whole of money. FTX customers were just users of platforms that thought that if that was a trusted platform. Decentralized exchange site the same possibility. We can't really sure to trust the human nor code created by human.
The source looks unreliable for me. Sam was gambling customer's funds through alameda. SBF also said that he used mostly of funds to buy robinhood shares. I don't even think that the news that already published by OP was coming from a reliable source
It is true that the problem of exchanges is that customers just only trust the exchange owner which supposed not to be as the customers coins are not transparently stored on a wallet, even proof of reserve can still be manipulated and nothing should be trusted. But people are always warned not to leave their coins on exchanges but they do not, they still prefer to safe their coins on an exchange that their coins are not safe.
I do not consider that news to be true, but also we do not not know how true it is or even if it is yet true.