Nine justices set out Tuesday to determine what the future of the internet would look like if the Supreme Court were to narrow the scope of a law that some believe created the age of modern social media. After nearly three hours of arguments, it was clear that the justices had no earthly idea.

On several occasions, the justices said they were confused by the arguments before them – a sign that they may find a way to dodge weighing in on the merits or send the case back to the lower courts for more deliberations. At the very least they seemed spooked enough to tread carefully.

Justice Elena Kagan even suggested that Congress step in. “I mean, we’re a court. We really don’t know about these things. You know, these are not like the nine greatest experts on the internet,” she said to laughter.

That hesitancy, coupled with the fact that the justices were wading for the first time into new territory, suggests the court, in the case at hand, is not likely to issue a sweeping decision with unknown ramifications in one of the most closely watched disputes of the term.

Tech companies big and small have been following the case, fearful that the justices could reshape how the sites recommend and moderate content going forward and render websites vulnerable to dozens of lawsuits, threatening their existence.

Oral arguments drifted into a maze of issues, raising concerns about trending algorithms, thumbnail pop-ups, artificial intelligence, emojis, endorsements and even Yelp restaurant reviews. But at the end of the day, the justices seemed deeply frustrated with the scope of the arguments before them and unclear of the road ahead.

Yet even Thomas, who has expressed reservations about the scope of Section 230 before, seemed skeptical. He sought clarification from Schnapper of how one might be able to distinguish between algorithms that “present cooking videos to people who are interested in cooking and ISIS videos to people interested in ISIS.”

Alito asked whether Google might have been simply organizing information, instead of recommending any kind of content. “I don’t know where you’re drawing the line.”

Chief Justice John Roberts tried to make an analogy with a book seller. He suggested that Google recommending certain information is no different than a book seller sending a reader to a table of books with related content.

When Lisa Blatt, a lawyer for Google, stood up she warned the justices that “exposing websites to liability for implicitly recommending third-party context defies the text [of 230] and threatens today’s internet.”