This sentence puzzles me. Does anybody know what the author could have meant with it? As a European Scala FP programmer, I have no idea.
They are a fan of free speech == unrestricted speech. Most larger ecosystems these days have a code of conduct, restricting some forms of expression if they are deemed detrimental to the community. Something that very much riles advocates of unrestricted speech. Often, having a code of conduct is conflated with social justice activism - a movement that is prominently lamented in US politics more so than Europe.
Note: I'm not interested in debating which side is right here, or if that conflating of positions makes sense. Just pointing out the likely origin of the "microcosm" comment.
Suffice to say there's a lot of people at each others' throats, and it probably won't get better.
Hell the worst thing the Scala Discord deals with it are spambots!
There are (recent) threads out there on the interwebs were people suggest using Cats Effect or ZIO(or as a better Python) without it being hateful. And there are enough people not going at each other because of some effect library.
I am not saying everything is good, there is enough room for improvement, but I feel like you have an outdated view of the Scala ecosystem. For example "ecosystem firmly split between ZIO and Cats" doesn't ring true either, there are tools/libraries like, scala-cli and Mill or tapir coming out that offer a more pragmatic experience, without locking you down to the pure FP dogmatism.
> a prominent "middle ground" member of the community disappeared after accusations that he was a sexual abuser
Yes, this stirred up a lot of controversy and I found this indeed a failure of the Scala community, I don't think that means things haven't gotten better though.
[1] http://meta.plasm.us/posts/2020/07/25/response-to-john-de-go...
For instance, defending someone against the charge of white supremacy is clearly not the same thing as defending white supremacists.
That neither you nor the article you linked bothered to acknowledge that distinction is quite damning of your ability to think critically.