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I am not saying everything is good, there is enough room for improvement, but I feel like you have an outdated view of the Scala ecosystem.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.