The U.S. Supreme Court heard a case back in February that could have exposed social media companies to broad liability and, according to some glum predictions, broken the internet as we know it.

With one small exception, it was the justices’ first real foray into the legal issues surrounding an industry that now counts billions of daily users around the world, can swing global markets and even decide elections. During oral arguments, several justices seemed wary of messing with a technology that has reached those epic proportions, largely in the absence of judicial interference.