I don't think it is all about wording though. I think there is a fundamental disagreement throughout the game as to what should result in a handling call. This play is a great example--a lot of people think it should not be a call because he did not intend that the ball hit his arm and a lot of people think it should be a handling call because he deliberately flung his body to block a shot and didn't keep his arm out of the way.
And VAR makes the whole controvert worse: without VAR, everyone can complain about what angle the ref saw etc., but with VAR everyone gets to see what happened from a variety of angles and speeds, which intensifies the criticism because we know what the R saw when he went to the monitor.