Gasp! Yawn. HN has become so pearl-clutchingly alarmist recently. Everybody relax.
The solution to scams is to educate people on scams, as quickly as you can do so in the changing environment, by publishing information about what's possible with the latest technology. The solution is not to require onerous identity verification for every software product that could be used by scammers, because they'll just move to the next product that doesn't require it, or they'll simply provide fraudulent documents. Or you'll get "resellers" who provide their own fraudulent KYC documents and then sell access to their account to other criminals on the black market, making it even more difficult to monitor for abuse.
If you want a startup offering such tools to protect people from scams, they can do it by collecting data on what the tools are used for - it should be pretty obvious based on transcripts who is using it to scam people.
The solution to scams is to educate people on scams, as quickly as you can do so in the changing environment, by publishing information about what's possible with the latest technology. The solution is not to require onerous identity verification for every software product that could be used by scammers, because they'll just move to the next product that doesn't require it, or they'll simply provide fraudulent documents. Or you'll get "resellers" who provide their own fraudulent KYC documents and then sell access to their account to other criminals on the black market, making it even more difficult to monitor for abuse.
If you want a startup offering such tools to protect people from scams, they can do it by collecting data on what the tools are used for - it should be pretty obvious based on transcripts who is using it to scam people.