Notice to NFL fans out there: If you’re following “Dov Kleiman” or any other aggregators, do yourself a favor and hit that unfollow button.
On Friday, Kleiman once again misled NFL fans, this time with an erroneous report about New York Jets wide receiver Garrett Wilson. The widely despised aggregation account, which hilariously claims to provide “The Best and Most Accurate NFL News,” posted on X that many insiders around the league believe Wilson will request a trade from the Jets this offseason, citing James Palmer of Bleacher Report. Yet, Palmer himself refuted Kleiman’s post.
“This is also not really what I said. So, yeah frustrating for all of us,” replied Palmer to a fan beneath Kleiman’s post. The fan also pointed out that Kleiman erroneously claimed that the Jets have had “constant turnover” at head coach in Wilson’s career despite Wilson playing for the same head coach going into each of his three NFL seasons.
Somehow, Kleiman still has 328.9K followers on X. Any social media-entrenched football fan knows his account is purely designed to bait engagement, with facts taking back a seat. He doesn’t care about informing you. He just wants you to pay attention to him, regardless of whether the attention is positive or negative. Yet, hundreds of thousands of people continue to support him. It is very likely that some of you reading this are following him. Why not contribute to the cause and unfollow?
Aggregators like Kleiman are ruining sports media. Living solely for the dopamine rush of watching the number beside a little heart symbol go up, they misquote reporters, exaggerate situations, rush to share things before they are confirmed, and sometimes outright lie to try and gain as much attention as possible, all in hopes of bringing some semblance of satisfaction to their lives.
Two years ago, when Jets fans were anxiously waiting for news about Aaron Rodgers, Kleiman inaccurately claimed the trade was complete. His influence is so strong that he even duped Garrett Wilson, prompting Wilson to share a flurry of posts that convinced Jets fans the trade was done. But Wilson quickly realized that Dov is a faker and made sure to point it out.
Crazed football followers who spend too much time on X, like myself, are well aware of Kleiman’s shenanigans, but his real victims are the normal, happy people who only casually check into social media. They will see one of his posts and give it the same credibility as a legitimate reporter without even questioning it. Because why wouldn’t you? He’s got a check mark (which means nothing anymore; for those unaware, anybody can buy one) and over 300,000 followers, so he must be legit! And so Dov’s reign over the football kingdom continues, spreading misinformation all across the land.
Anyone familiarized with the behavior of Dov-types can admit how harmful these actions are to the sports world at large, yet these accounts are only growing exponentially; in fact, social media platforms actively promote them, pushing their posts through algorithms designed to keep users on the app by feeding them the most controversial posts. I’m even contributing by writing an article about it.
But I hope by bringing attention to it, we can take down sports aggregators together. It all starts with unfollowing them and not sharing their material. Sports fans deserve to get their news from the source, not through uninformed and unprofessional third parties with selfish motives.