To be fair, it was the PUBG developers themselves who called Fortnite a clone:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/insertcoin/2017/09/22/pubg-deve...

And also Epic themselves stated Fortnite was their "own version" of "Battle Royale games like PUBG"

https://blog.us.playstation.com/2017/09/12/fortnite-battle-r...

I bought and played Fornite, the actual game, during it's beta for a long time. The battle royale version of it that people now call Fornite only came out much later.

I've played Fornite. I've played Fornite BR (at release). They were obviously a clone. What is Fornite now is something drastically different.

Anyone who doesn't call Fornite a clone of PUBG obviously only started playing Fornite BR and Fornite BR alone much later.

The most popular mode of Fortnite is basically PUBG+building mechanic (Minecraft).