Whataboutism is often perfectly justified, so people shouldn't reflexively defend themselves against the accusation of whataboutism. In many cases, the appropriate response to such accusations is that yes, you're engaging in whataboutism and that's actually good.
For instance, if someone does something bad and everyone criticizes him for it, yet other people do the same thing all the time and never get any shit or are even praised for it, then it's a *good* thing thing to point that out as long you don't claim it makes a bad thing good.
This is such an obvious point that, whenever I engage in whataboutism for that sort of reasons and someone points out that it's what I'm doing, as if they had thereby shown that my argument was fallacious or that it could be dismissed, I can only assume they're stupid.
Now, people can disagree about whether the conditions are met in any particular case and therefore about whether it was a legitimate use of whataboutism, but pointing out that something is whataboutism is never enough. You have to show that it wasn't a legitimate use of it.
I agree with @CapacityBoost that when people accuse someone of whataboutism, they sometimes mean what he explains below and that *this* is bad, but I don't think it's always or even most of the times what people do when they throw that accusation.
https://twitter.com/CapacityBoost/status/1347297597829083136
Crucially, even when it's what you mean, it's not enough to yell "whataboutism!" You actually have to make the case that the person you're criticizing was in fact comparing things that are not morally equivalent, which is a particular case of the more general point I made above.
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