Quote from: Aliasalta on September 28, 2019, 09:41:31 AM

So i was reading a few ANNs and came across this.
I saw a few issues with it so i thought i would go to the telegram group to ask about it.

i see the people behind FRED are active here so they should address this issue, at least to put potential investors at ease, but for me i will be moving to the next one as i can not support anyone who censor healthy scepticism.

Hi!

Thank you for letting us know about your "issues".

I'm gonna try to address them, even though I'm skilled in the "communication field", which seems to imply I can easily "lie" to people (funny how a competency can make you look dirty... Now I feel sorry for having had an education Cheesy

)

"turns out my messages get auto deleted, which i find suspicious."
-> I don't know in what conditions your message were "automatically deleted" exactly, but if the process was "automatic" it means that our bot did that. Which means that you have probably posted some links. We activated an "auto delete" for recent members who are posting links, reason being that...we don't want the Telegram group to become a platform for anyone to advertise their spammy links or their own project that is not related to FRED Energy. A bot cannot be "smart" enough to guess if a posted link is genuine and informative, or if it's just a referrer link or anything like that.

"
Doing some research into the team i found it strange to have the same team as matrix and other projects.

now i know its common for blockchain people to advise on several products, but if you hold a high ranked daily job in a company, and also are say the CTO of several blockchain project at the same time is seems suspicious. CTO is a serious role, or no ?
i find it strange that the core team is the same but the CEO(who usually takes the reputation hit from scams) and community manager(who the community relate to and interact with to generate trust) changes for each project, new people being brought in are usually the same people across the projects as well.
"
-> Shehzad is working with different projects as a developer, he's working with us as such. It's his job as a freelancer, so I guess it's normal for him to seek for not only one job at a time. He decided to specialize himself in the blockchain, which explains why he's on different blockchain projects. Again, nothing wrong with that (and this has already been addressed in a very recent post). He also has his "trusted people", that he suggested to us, with proofs that those people helped other projects raise funds. Which is, as a newborn project, what we're trying to do. Again, nothing wrong with that... to develop all we are planning to, we need funds. Until now we have been 100% working on our own funds, so we need the community and investors to kick in.

"another thing i found suspicious is that the same core team is behind icobench, which gave them a high score."

-> What you call the "core team" is a bit misleading. Michael & I are actually the most active and leading members of this project Team, we have been doing lots of things on this project until now, and we are definitely not restricted to our "official roles", aka community manager as far as I'm concerned - as you noted I'm also "officially" a creative director, but I'm also very active in contacting potential partners, inventors and product designers - I recently added a product designer to our Team, not officially yet but he'll be added to the websites soon, we prioritize working on real stuff than updating the communication supports. Michael, as a CEO, is also doing much more than "directing things". That what we need to do when we're not as many as we'd like to be. And yes, that's a weak point of our Team for now, as we are a bit under numbered and we need more active Team members (which we are working on).
As for the assumption that the CTO&advisors are "behind icobench", that's a very bold statement: do you have any links to support that claim? As far as I know they are registered on ICOBENCH as "experts" (anybody can postulate as an "expert" there by the way... I didn't try myself as I'm not pretending to be a "blockchain expert" but I know that there's an application form to fill, and I assume it's checked and validated by the ICOBENCH team). Many "icobench experts" are active on this ico ranking website, and the vast majority of them are involved with different projects, which again...is something normal. By the way, we got a ranking & review by another icobench "expert", that is not part of the team and he freely gave us an interesting review, which highlighted some weak points to be worked on.

"also the people in the core team are mostly people with education in communication, human psychology and marketing which would explain how they are able to give trustworthy answers to questions."
-> yup, that was exactly one of the reported "flaws" of the project, noted in that icobench review. The lack of technical & renewable energy specialists officially involved. Which we have been working on since the beginning, and we're happy to say that "unofficially for now" this issue has been solved. Rome was not built in one day, neither will FRED Energy... we've constantly been open and transparent in our communication with the community, and we'll always be. For now, those new members are anonymous, as they have a right and reason to be, when they decide to go "public" we'll publish their names.
Concerning the "how they are able to give trustworthy answers to question", I dunno about that myself, as I usually speak from my heart, and I can easily become a bit too "passionate" about things, especially when a genuinely nice project and people I personally know and respect are being under attack.

"now i am not here to say that this is, or is not legit, but if they had me considering supporting them then they probably will get others to do so and others might not be as thorough.
i am just sharing the experience i had which i felt was important enough for me to actually create and account over just lurking and soaking information."

-> Thank you for clearing that up, before this phrase what was written looked more like manipulation leading to dicredit (insinuating that being part of multiple projects makes some team members "suspicious", and thus the whole project; claiming that some people are "behind icobench" while - to my knowledge - they are not; insinuating that people having skills in marketing and communication might lead them to be deceptive...)

I'm personally sorry that you got interested by FRED and finally decided not to get involved because of those reasons, but I also understand that one needs to be extremely careful and leery about "new" blockchain projects that are raising funds. If you consider having a second look, I hope you'll find out that there's nothing "suspicious" about the project.

"IF you are looking into investing with FRED i highly advice that you do your homework on them, maintain healthy scepticism towards official channels and make a educated decision.
Now i am sure they will try to discredit my statements because i have fresh account, but you could do your own research or go to the telegram group and try to mention these things and see for your self."
-> You're the first to speak here, so now we have no other choice but to fall in that "rethorical trap" -> when someones says "now I'm sure they will...", that assumes that any reaction or reply will be biased and dishonest.
I already know that our bot doesn't delete messages unless they contain external links.
Besides that, if our moderators are deleting critical opinions, I'm gonna personally ask them not to, as getting criticized and being able to respond is one of the best ways to clear things up, and it always leads to better consideration of the weak points we need to address. And I love "real discussions" in a community, not the usual "praise the Team" comments we can see now and then from bounty hunters Wink

"Side note: While writing this post i noticed they also banned me from the telegram group for asking why they delete questions that address real issues, without being judgemental i might add, all i tried to do was have them ensure me that there were no reason to be sceptic. so for me this is a big red flag and the reason i decided not to fund this project. "

-> You're right about the "red flag" concerning censorship. Our moderators are full of good will but they might have a hard time setting up a line between "constructive criticism" and "slander/FUD". After discussion with them, they did explain it that way, and they were considering your comments as "FUD". Please DM me your telegram ID, I'll get you unbanned and I'll clear this up with the mods. We need the constructive criticism & healthy skepticism.

Thank you for getting our attention already!
Hope to see you back around soon