Google's John Mueller clarified on Twitter that if you remove links from your disavow file, those links will start to count again - well, if Google hasn't discounted them other ways (i.e. Penguin or other methods).
I am surprised I never outright covered this before, but I 100% mentioned it in numerous posts. I just thought it was obvious, you remove a link from a disavow file, that link is no longer disavowed. I mean, what if you make a mistake and disavow a good link or someone gets angry at you and does some simply hack to negative SEO you with the disavow file.
Here is John's tweet, lovely typo of course, but we all make those:
If you remove something from a disavow fire and upload it again, then it won't be disavowed anymore, so that should just work.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) August 13, 2019
Disavow fire. I love it. Can I use that? ;) pic.twitter.com/yWXVqYdEqn
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) August 13, 2019
So go ahead, remove links from your disavow file if you want to see if they will count - but it is hard to know if Google is really counting those links.
Forum discussion at Twitter.