> If your friend Bob used withheld information to convince someone of a political position you strongly agreed with, can you imagine yourself saying "Bob manipulated him"? Of course not, because "manipulation" is understood to mean "...for something bad".
I think this depends on both the position and the actual arguments that were used (or withheld).
To give a hypothetical example for Democrats in the U.S.:
- If Bernie Sanders were to information about the negative budgetary repercussions of his Medicare-for-all plan (I'm not claiming he has or hasn't; I'm just giving an example), many Democrats probably wouldn't consider that "manipulation" of the public.
- But if he were to withhold information about how Medicare-for-all would actually somehow benefit corporate interests/profits at the cost of taxpayers (again, I'm not claiming this; I'm just giving a hypothetical example), a lot of the same Democrats probably would consider that "manipulation" of the public.
Of course there are people who would behave the same way in both situations too, but my point is that there are lots that would behave differently.
And obviously this isn't to claim people have zero bias here, but I don't think that's particularly specific to "manipulation". People just have a bias against criticizing people whose conclusions they agree with in general, whether the accusation is one of manipulation, corruption, or something else.