A few probably silly questions

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Is the need to please others more an autistic than non autistic thing? Can wanting x but agreeing to y be part of the masking process?

I get your point about manipulation, but that doesn't apply to me at all.

I would think people pleasing is more of a personality trait and not autism. For me personally, I'm the complete opposite of being a people pleaser and most of the people pleasers that I've met were not autistic.

"people pleasing" can be a response to trauma, but if you care about somebody, you probably don't want to make them unhappy. I don't think it is only and autistic "thing", but a trauma response (see "fawning" behavior pattern) and also maybe human nature. Compromise is good, but sometimes we let ourselves get pushed into agreeing with things that are bad for us one way or another. I got counseling to learn how to say NO and to set boundaries. If I could learn that, I think almost anybody could. It is a tool you can use in ever day life, but I had to be taught how to do it, and to see that I could choose to do other things besides saying "yes, or OK" in any situation. It takes practice, but now I know how to say no and how to set boundaries and enforce them, my life has been easier and better.

Sometimes adjusting for other people is just part of life. It helps us all live together.

You just don't want to go to far with it!

I always thought that an autistic person would be more straightforward because we can't always tell the nuances in the things that other people are subtly trying to let us know they want from us, so we miss those cues altogether and end up being blunt and not particularly people-pleasing at all.

On the other hand, we might go out of our way to make sure that people aren't mad at us because they think we are being too weird, and it that case we might turn ourselves into a pretzel trying to conform to someone else's wishes, but that might not always be successful, and in some cases might be spectacularly unsuccessful.

Also, agreeing to do something you don't want to do could be a way of making yourself a doormat, which just makes you a victim, not a people-pleaser.

I think it's personality combined with ASD extreme. I'm the highly sensitive ASD type and a "people pleaser". Sometimes I wish I were the other type. Moderation would be best. B/c I don't regulate my bluntness well I "err" on the side of self-censorship (or incoherent babbling). I would love to be outspoken in a confident, kind way.

I think it can be directly related to difficulty with social-emotional reciprocity. If you don't know how to jive with NTs, and they don't know how to jive with you, you can at least learn what they like and do it. It's not always obvious if someone wants to listen to you or spend time with you, but when they state a preference for something then you don't have to guess, and by complying you know things are going well at least in regards to this one variable of their preference. If you become overly reliant on this input as an indicator that things are going well between you and others then you become a people pleaser.

A lot of autistic people are ostracised or made to feel or function as an outsider in various ways. Employment comes to mind and the various environments that exist within employment.

Some autistic folk compensate for this by being extra nice and doing so to try to fit in.

Alternatively, some autistic folk might be socially unaware to the point of seeming to care little about others.

It really depends on the individual in question.