FUD

Definitions

Short for fear, uncertainty, and doubt, referring to messaging designed to scare people away from a competitor or choice by emphasizing risk and confusion. In engineering slang, people call something FUD when they think the warning is more strategic than honest.
In plain English: Fear-based messaging meant to create doubt and uncertainty.
Example: "The vendor pitch leaned hard on FUD about open-source support, even though the team had already validated that the community option met their operational needs."