> Some of the biggest companies on earth—including Meta and Microsoft—take aggressive, litigious approaches to prohibiting web scraping on their own properties, while taking liberal approaches to scraping data on other companies’ properties.

Umm, no; author needs to study the word "hypocrisy" more deeply than a cursory glance in the dictionary.

Doing something to others, while defending against the same thing, is not hypocrisy.

For instance, soccer player isn't a hypocrite for defending against the ball going into his net, while trying to put it into the other team's net.

A soldier on the war front isn't a hypocrite for shooting, while also taking cover and dodging bullets.

These subjects are not hypocrites because they are not acting in one way, while preaching that they, or others, ought to be acting in a different way.

Microsoft would be hypocrites if they published an official statement such that nobody who engages in web scraping has the right to defend their own site against web scraping, because that would not resemble their actual behavior and position which could be inferred from their behavior. (Is there such a statement somewhere?)

For hypocrisy to take place, you have to actually preach that you and others should behave in a certain way, and then not actually behave in exactly that way. If you only act, and don't preach, you cannot be a hypocrite.

Moreover, your team's net is not the same object as another team's net. If a soccer player loudly professes "it is morally wrong for anyone to kick the ball into our net", but then kicks the ball into the other team's net, that is not hypocrisy. His statement references only his own net; he didn't proclaim that it's wrong to kick any ball into any net whatsoever.