No they didn’t. This “feature” is garbage for the people who actually buy it. It makes putting air tags on things shared by a bunch of people a huge pain in the ass.
“Freaking people out who are on the bus with you because you forgot your phone but have your keys” is not a selling feature.
I'm one of those people who has 10 Airtag, who lives with others and haven't had this problem. As far as I (and many others) am concerned, "Apple just raised the privacy bar and now Tile and other small players need to up their game to stay relevant."
The parent comment said "You can chose to stop getting an alert if a particular device is following you". I don't see how what they said applies to your scenario, given your scenario is literally the opposite.
Since you weren't near the airtags, you couldn't have stopped them from beeping/following you. But whoever was at your home near the airtags (presumably the person who put them in the fridge) had the ability to disable them from beeping/following them.