To answer your question: No. Agile isn't a form of micromanagement. But like any tool, people can use it incorrectly. Agile is wonderful when implemented properly and when people are consistent with it.

My thoughts on the "Devs not talking to anyone but the scrum master" topic:

I've worked in a place where that was a rule before. HOWEVER, the rule was related more to asking people to complete tasks. For example, I can't randomly go up to a dev tester and ask them to do some testing for me in the next few hours. I need to talk to the scrum master so they can discuss with their team member how that work will fit into the sprint if it's an emergency (or if it needs to be pushed to the backlog for a future sprint).

In that case, I understood the concept of "devs not talking to each other" because it really translated to funneling tasks through one checkpoint so a particular developer isn't overworked or is so busy doing emergency tasks that they can't get their planned work done.

Otherwise, devs SHOULD be talking to each other. Always. It helps you work through problems quicker, become closer as a team, and deliver faster.

Just to offer another perspective: I've also been in an environment where people thought devs "talked too much". After a sit-down, we found out that actually translated to "devs aren't independent enough to get their own work done. Because everything is so fragmented, devs have to go to three other people to complete on small task."

So, when the managers decided to move to agile, they expected that to help bring information to the right places and stop a lot of the fragmentation within the organization. Some people were kind of disappointed that after Agile was implemented, devs were still running back and forth to each other. But, what they didn't realize is that was happening less and less. It took time though. So, maybe if that is what's going on in your organization, it could be that people expected agile to fix things overnight. That's just not the way it works.