Meta must pay US$567 million (NZ$966m) into a fund to remedy its role in a youth mental health crisis, on top of a previously decided US$375 million (NZ$639m) in penalties, a New Mexico judge has ruled, comparing the social media giant to polluting factories.A jury in March had already found Meta liable on all counts in a trial on child safety, including wilfully engaging in "unfair and deceptive" and "unconscionable" trade practices. The landmark decision addressed concerns from parents, whistleblowers and lawmakers alike. Meta in that ruling was ordered to pay $375m in damages.New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez first sued Meta in 2023. He had claimed Meta created a "breeding ground" for child predators on Facebook and Instagram, which the company denied.Meta said in a social media post on Thursday (US time) that it disagrees with the ruling and will appeal.Thursday's ruling goes beyond monetary penalties, however. Among other actions, the judge said Meta must "Delete the accounts and all personal information collected from accounts belonging to a user under 13 years of age."The judge said Meta must turn off push notifications from 8am to 3pm on weekdays during the school year and 10pm to 7am on all other days for users under 18. New Mexico teen accounts also should automatically be set on private, and Meta also needs to stop New Mexico users from "engaging in romantic or sexualised interactions with Meta's artificial intelligence chatbots".The ruling is part of a two-phrase trial. The first, to determine whether Meta misled users about dangers on its platform, resulted in a March jury ordering Meta to pay $375m in damages. Meta said at the time that it "respectfully" disagreed and would appeal.The second phase of the trial, before a judge, was to decide whether Meta's platforms were a "public nuisance".Throughout Thursday's ruling, Judge Bryan Biedscheid compared Meta and its suite of apps to a factory - and its harm to puffing toxins into the air.The court found that "just as noxious pollution produced by the factory can harm the common public right to reasonably clean air, the harmful effects of Meta's platforms on children do not stay contained by its platforms and, instead, migrate to the internet as a whole and, perhaps most concerning, to the real world and create a common, societal burden on and harm to the affected children and their families and schools, as well as hospitals and law enforcement".-CNN