Bloggers quickly Weev's claims, saying that it did not appear as though his attack would actually work.

Weev's claims are false, Amazon's Smith said.

Former Amazon employee said that the problem really did appear to have been caused by an employee mistake.

A friend within the company told him that someone working on Amazon's French site mistagged a number of keyword categories, including the "Gay and Lesbian" category, as pornographic, using what's known internally as the Browse Nodes tool. Soon the mistake affected Amazon sites worldwide, Daisey said in an interview. "If you use that tool in one site, it affects every site in Amazon. So the guy screwed up in France and it propagated everywhere," he said.

Daisey, a monologist who spent three years at Amazon, was amused that Weev's claims had been so given that Weev has made a name for himself as an online "troll" who . "I think it's hilarious that he's gotten as much traction as he has with the story because his whole modus operandi is about pranking people."