I'm not sure if the first part (e.g. some words becoming links) is spam or not but it does happen sometimes on various credible websites. It's a form of advertising that just picks up on various words in a blog or an article, etc.

The orange square (next to Subscrie to RSS at the top) is the RSS logo. It's official and not anything to be concerned about. Sometimes links have their official logo next to them and sometimes the link is the logo. On blog sites for example, you'll find alot of little logos like that, which people know and use to share things.