Is an ad hom only personal

I’m in a discussion where a tweet was posted making a claim. In the discussion I copied and pasted a counter argument from a fact check site. People immediately attacked the fact check site and not the counter argument that was presented. I called this an ad hom. They said it wasn’t because they weren’t criticizing my personal character. My response was to think of me as a nuetral observer, I wasn’t making the argument the fact check site was. Who is correct here?

Geoff, I encourage you to look up Dr. Bo's exhaustive list of Ad hominem arguments. It is clear that it is one of the go-to logical fallacies for the ill-informed, but you'll be awed by the variations the often cliché argument takes in its myriad forms.

Yes, an ad hom is ONLY personal and directed towards the person making the claim. The phrase "Ad Hominem" itself means "to the man." What those people committed was not an ad hom, but it could very well be the genetic fallacy (asserting the argument is false by criticizing the source of the argument without dealing with the argument itself): https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/99/Genetic-Fallacy<>
However, it is important to understand the nuances of dealing with sources of arguments and when it is fallacious and when it is not, so I recommend checking this short article by Dr. Bo to understand that difference: https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/bg/Bo/LogicalFallacies/8HVUvaOF/The-Gentetic-Fallacy-and-Probability<>