[recursivedoubts]

Yes, I know it's confusing because the language has been so thoroughly corrupted over the last decade.

Let me show you my reasoning:

JSON is not a hypertext, even if you include URLs in it. [0]

HATEOAS requires a hypertext (see the first word of the acronym)

HATEOAS is "an essential part of the of the 'uniform interface' feature of REST" [1]

Therefore a JSON API, even with some embedded URLs, using multiple HTTP Methods and following a traditional hierarchical path scheme, is not REST-ful.

[0] - A sufficiently advanced client could interpret a JSON-encoded hypertext in a general, uniform manner. However, in practice, this is almost never the case.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HATEOAS