Space is hard by many aspects, but on that part it's much easier than on earth.
I'd call it a wash, space is hard, but so are atmospheric interactions, weather, foliage, and all the side effects of human habitation (like someone building a house in the middle of your laser link, yes that happens.)
Atmospheric scintillation is the barrier for free space laser communications on terra-firma; this is one reason we enclose the laser light in optical fibre to avoid this problem.
In space where nobody can hear you scream, scintillation isn't a problem.