Does this investigation go against the grain of the platform?
Some currencies are for anonymity. You can be anonymous here, but the transactions cannot. It is the only way we can prevent people from abusing the system and ruining it for everyone. So what is on the blockchain is and will always be public. At least this blockchain.
So if you do anything on the blockchain here then it is public knowledge. That may be why so many of the actions of people happen outside of steemit. Places like steemit.chat, discord, etc.