Whatever the case may be, the thing is that FUN token has indeed seen a significant surge in price lately.
While it could be that freebitco.in team would have manipulated the price, it could be also be that insiders might have leveraged this news.
Anyway, the thing is whether this increase our chances of investing in the token ? Definitely not for me after seeing how freebitco.in has been handling the issues last year.
Fun token channel activity increased significantly when the price and before the pump happened because the team announced big partnerships and exciting future plan on the project after a long silent many years of development.
I doubt the team manipulated the price just to boost the price because they will just make losses from holders that in losses due to the price dump of this token from ATH.
I think this project undergo an internal changes especially to team members that create hype to the project with their new update.