As I reported on Monday, the Swedish dissident YouTube channel Swebb TV was abruptly and without warning pulled by YouTube. The channel was very popular, rivaling the state broadcaster in its number of viewers, so its removal caused a commotion.

Today YouTube restored Swebb TV, once again without any notice. YouTube never explains; it doesn’t have to explain, because it is part of Google the Almighty. So we don’t know whether the public outrage over Swebb TV’s deletion caused YouTube to change its mind.

Our Swedish correspondent LN sends this translation of an announcement posted on Facebook:

Dear Swebb TV viewers,

Today we are pleased to note that YouTube has decided to reactivate our account and that the channel has now restarted!

We believe that this is a consequence of your and all alternative channels’ commitment not to allow this form of abuse.

Therefore, we would like to thank you again for the support and the consideration we have received during these past few days.

The break has shown how vulnerable we are, and how important it is to explore alternative solutions, where we are not in the hands of different interests. Therefore the work to find alternatives will continue.

A positive aspect in this context is that we have received so much evidence of how important this work is, and our goal now is to scale it up further.

Thanks again for your support!

Sincerely,

Mikael and the Swebb TV team