Gary Illyes from Google in his Reddit AMA said that Google does not have an internal linking over optimization penalty. He went on to say, in his Gary tone, “you can abuse your internal links as much as you want AFAIK.”

Here was the question:

Here is Gary’s answer:

Matt Cutts said something very similar back in 2013, John Mueller confirmed internal links are different but also said internal links anchor text does matter.

Forum discussion at Reddit.