Totally agree with you!
Years and years ago, fans knew nothing about a transfer until it was announced on late evening TV news. Out of the blue, it would be announced that
Ron Atkinson had broken the transfer record by signing Bryan Robson or Alex Ferguson had signed Teddy Sheringham.
3G and social media changed all of that and created a niche industry based solely on transfer rumour and speculation, even providing full time employment for many people and Sky TV's deadline day programme has become an annual cultural event. This leads to the idiocy of
a youtube fan channel having a 30 minute interview with a journalist on what he thinks are United transfer plans, wannabe ITK's like
Fabrizio Romano who are actually just doing guesswork by stalking agents, and MSM football journalists who don't even know critical and foundational facts like the length of an existing contract, falsely reporting that player terms are agreed.
As you point out, 95% of what is reported is guesswork and mostly false. And fans whom are enjoined by social media get sucked in and react to this. What should just be a fun pastime to entertain football fans during the football-less summer months, but it seems many get over invested and take it far too seriously, leading to slander, abuse and other threatening behaviour towards club CEO's and financiers.