No, a whataboutism is irrelevant to the content. It’s non sequitur. A deflection. Accusing the accused of something completely unrelated to the topic at hand. Like the example I gave you on a silver platter. A thief telling another thief he is a thief and shouldn’t be a thief.

When someone accuses you of doing something, and a rebuttal is that the accuser does the exact same thing, that is pointing out hypocrisy. It is directly related and has a case in the argument. Because if both parties are guilty of the same thing, then there’s no point in the accusation or argument.

That is whataboutism. This is not a whataboutism. See my previous comment that apparently you didn’t read all the way through.