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I can't speak for the others, but I think characterising this distinction as 'authoritarian' or 'liberal' misses the point. It's not freedom or lack of freedom, but rather one conception of freedom verses a different conception of freedom.
There's two very brought conceptions of freedom, which the first of which I'll label the British/empirical/analytical (liberal) conception of freedom, and the second I'll label the continental conception of freedom.
The analytical conception of freedom is the one that people in the Anglosphere are most familiar with, given that its modern form was born out of the English philosophical tradition. Locke, Mills, and of course the American Founding Fathers. Simplifying greatly, their conception of freedom is one where the external tyrannies of government (or some other external authority) be limited to allow individual freedom and human flourishing. In the extreme, individual rights only end where they infringe upon another person's rights, only as a matter of practically managing conflicting individual rights. Again, something that I'm sure pretty much everyone here will be familiar with.
The continental conception of freedom, for which I name after the poorly defined school of continental philosophy, has a very much different conception of freedom. For the continental philosophers (and I am painting with a really broad brush here), the true constraint on freedom was not some external tyranny or power structure, but yourself. To the continental philosopher, the most shackled man was one who was a slave to his own desires and unable to pursue the "Good" ("Good" here is a big placeholder for any given philosopher to insert his own conception, often it was capital-R Reason, or God, or something else). The continental philosopher looks at a man who wantonly satisfies all his baser instincts as no better than an animal. Consider a man who just fulfills all his most base and carnal desires today - maybe this man sits in his parents basement all day, eating junkfood, smoking weed, playing video games and jacking off to porn all day. Is this man truly free? From a liberal perspective, yes he is. He can do whatever wants with no authority to constrain his behaviour. But to the continental philosopher, this man is a wretched beast in full thrall of his desires. He has no capacity to reason, to think, to act. He's not a moral agent in the same way an animal isn't a moral agent.
Instead, a man truly becomes free when (in one conception) he is able to use Reason to overcome his desires and fulfil a higher purpose. Freedom then, paradoxically, comes from restraint, and restraint from your base desires most of all. A man who commits himself to Reason, or God, or some other higher purpose is infinitely more free than the man who jacks off all day in the basement, even when that commitment requires some external restraint and authority imposed upon him. Actually, even that's not completely accurate. It's more that the continental philosopher sees no distinction between freedom and external restraint. If you're a Kantian, to be free is to use Reason, which is to follow the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative isn't so much an external constraint on behaviour but the natural outcome of someone who is truly committed to Reason and is liberated by it.
Edit: To clarify, the continental conception of freedom believes that true freedom is the ability (granted by Reason, or God, etc) to make a choice: live your life for the purpose of the Good, or live fulfilling your base desires. Obviously choosing the former is the correct choice, virtually by definition. Those who are slaves to their desires don't even get to make this choice, thus aren't free.
The continental conception of freedom has been in many cases criticised (typically by those who believe in an analytic/liberal conception of freedom) as leading to authoritarian tendences. This is not an unfounded criticism. Because this conception of freedom comes by serving the Good, sometimes this means that people have to be made free. Not in the liberal sense, but people must be forced to act in such a way that they will eventually become liberated. This is where you get things like the wonky Marxist conceptions of freedom. To the Marxist, man is not truly free in a liberal society, he is a slave to the capitalist socialisation. Only when man achieves critical consciousness and and achieves the Marxist Good (communist utopia), will he be truly free. Which is why one-party authoritarian Marxist states can claim to be more free than liberal democracies, because they see themselves further along that path than liberal democracies.
However, I think the idea that the continental conception of freedom must necessarily lead to authoritarianism to be unhelpful and untrue. I would say it's about as equally true to say that the analytical/liberal conception of freedom must necessarily lead to moral nihilism, hedonism and solipsism. That is to say, neither of them are true, but they contain an element of truth to them.
And while I have framed the above as an Enlightenment phenomenon, really these ideas are much older than that. In Plato's The Republic, the old man Cephalus cites the poet Sophocles who says*, to paraphrase, he is glad to have become old where his desires (eros) has diminished, and that his desires were like a harsh and cruel mistress which he is now free of. His base desires having left him, he has now truly become free. And similarly, St Augustine's doctrine of original sin. We are all sinful, miserable creatures. It is only by the grace of God which allows us to overcome our sinful nature, our sinful instincts, do we truly become free.
I think what "authoritarian"-preferring commentors (as you are describing them) are saying is that that is a clear void in our society where the continental conception of freedom is concerned. This void was traditionally filled by traditional religion and traditional morality, something that has been dying a slow and painful death. I tend to agree with these commentors that the liberal conception of freedom alone isn't sufficient and is a strong source of societal decay. Actually - there is a form of continental freedom that is gaining traction nowadays, an old friend back in a new skin: Critical Marxism/Neo-Marxism/Western Marxism aka the woke or whatever you want to call them. I believe to truly stop the tide of the woke you need to offer an alternative form of continental freedom. Liberalism isn't enough.
*Translated in the version on Project Gutenberg as: "How well I remember the aged poet Sophocles, when in answer to the question, How does love suit with age, Sophocles,—are you still the man you were? Peace, he replied; most gladly have I escaped the thing of which you speak; I feel as if I had escaped from a mad and furious master."
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