I would argue this isn't true. I lived in Santa Monica when the scooters came about and once they removed the helmet law I loved the utility they provided. I lived about 2 miles away from downtown Santa Monica, which is totally walkable and I love walking, but sometimes I wanted to meet up with someone in a more reasonable amount of time. Instead of having to order an Uber for such a short trip, I would check Bird or the Lyft scooters to find one close to me, jump on it, and be downtown in roughly 10 minutes. And they're fun to ride!

Now Santa Monica does have a great bike share infrastructure that I also used quite a bit, but nothing is more frustrating that getting on a well used bike and having the brakes hardly work or the crank constantly slipping as you push the pedal downward. Don't get me wrong, you can totally get a bad scooter that isn't running well, but I think I ran into more worn down bikes, likely due to the bike program having been around longer.

My 2 cents, the more options the better.

EDIT: Also wanted to note, Santa Monica has a lot of bike lanes, which made riding the scooters around much easier and safer from my perspective.