If the empty state thing was in reference to smart pointers, it'd be a remarkable misunderstanding of how they work and how they should be used.
No, I don't think so. Many C++ libraries, especially those originally developed before C++11, implement their own smart pointer templates, which may end up having diverging semantics. That's exactly what OP was describing.
Examples off the top of my head include: CEF, Chromium, v8, Qt, glibmm, and the internal codebase where I work.
But it really doesn't fit the argument as framed. All smart pointer implementations are some valuable niceties wrapped around a naked pointer. It has nothing to do with preferring references to pointers; at the end of the day you just have a pointer -- just one that gets default initialized to 0, and deletes itself when you are done with it.
Frankly, the type of C++ developer that spends any serious amount of time trying to come to terms with a smart pointer API; even one they haven't seen before is the type of developer I wouldn't really want manipulating naked pointers.