When people online say that Giles is a kind of surrogate father figure to Buffy, they tend to mean this as an unambiguously positive statement.
They're thinking of things like Quentin Travers firing Giles in Helpless because he has "a father's love" for his Slayer charge. Of the moment in Dead Man's Party, just after Buffy comes back from LA, where Giles goes to the kitchen to make tea and we see how relieved he is that Buffy has returned safely. Of various supportive speeches he makes: at the end of early episodes like Never Kill A Boy On The First Date and When She Was Bad and Lie To Me. And of course in Innocence where he tells Buffy he won't accept that everything that happened to Angel is her fault ("if it's guilt you're looking for, Buffy, I'm not your man. All you will get from me is my support and my respect.").
In this interpretation, a lot of Giles's behavior in the later seasons is just pointlessly out of character. Giles is a father to Buffy, so the theory goes, so he wouldn't just abandon her when she needs him and fly off to a comfortable life in Europe with her. He wouldn't come back a year later just to throw even more unasked for responsibilities on her shoulders in the form of the Potentials. He wouldn't presume to make decisions on Buffy's behalf, without consulting her or telling her the truth. He wouldn't publicly question her leadership in front of the other Scoobies.
But, look. I don't think that's right.
For all its (many) faults, Buffy as a show does not have that sort of rosy-eyed view of fatherhood. Who are the other major father figures on the show, after all? Hank Summers? Mayor Wilkins? Xander Harris's father?? Quentin Travers may think Giles has "a father's love" for Buffy, but both Joyce and Maggie Walsh separately suggest Buffy "lacks a strong father figure". Indeed in A New Man (where that Maggie Walsh quote is from), Maggie also suggests that this lack has caused Buffy to take on an adult role "too early", which both echoes something Jenny warned Giles about ("Adulthood? Buffy's seventeen tomorrow, Giles. Don't rush her [...] You should be careful of treating her like a grown-up") in a deleted scene from Surprise and also ties back to Joyce's initial reaction to finding out that Buffy is the Slayer ("it's because you didn't have a strong father figure, isn't it?" can be read on commentary about Giles, even if Joyce doesn't know it yet).
This isn't to say that Joyce or Jenny or Maggie Walsh actively dispute the idea that Giles is a father figure to Buffy. It's just that they tell him, often to his face, that he's not doing a very good job of being one. And I think this is a critique that, more often than not, the show largely endorses.
Giles is a surrogate father figure to Buffy, but this is not an unalloyed positive. It does not mean he never acts badly towards her; it is not correct to say that the way in which Giles is unkind or unfair to Buffy happen despite him being a surrogate father figure. In fact they tend to happen because of it.
Almost immediately after meeting her, Giles attempts to position himself as an authority figure in her life, not just in the Slaying but in her personal life (trying to "forbid" her from trying out for the cheerleading squad as early as the third ever episode of the show; telling her she shouldn't go on dates, visiting her house unexpectedly and demanding she accompany him). He questions her judgement and her instincts time and time again (complaining that she doesn't identify vampires the 'correct' way in Welcome to the Hellmouth, not believing Xander is possessed in The Pack; not believing Sid is anything other than an inanimate dummy in The Puppet Show, ...).
He hypocritically warns her against using her powers to "impress cute boys", despite canonically having told every romantic interest he ever has (Jenny, Ethan, Olivia) about his role as a Watcher (and, indeed, that Buffy herself is the Slayer, information he forbids Buffy herself from sharing). He keeps secrets from her (the prophecy about her death in Prophecy Girl, his past demon-summoning activities that are revealed in The Dark Age) and makes decisions on her behalf (unilaterally deciding that the Slayer Handbook would be "of no use in [her] case"; murdering Ben in The Gift after Buffy chose to spare him). He doesn't think she should have a private life, but he does -- repeatedly -- insist on his own right to one (sending Buffy home when she comes looking for him in The Dark Age, telling her "this isn't your fight" when he goes to try to kill Angel in Passion).
These are not things Giles does because he's departing from his role as Buffy's father figure. Rather they are things he does which fit perfectly well within the role of "father figure" as the show understands it.
Tellingly, I think, one of the closest times Buffy and Giles come to admitting the parental role Giles plays in her life to each other is in Season 6's Life Serial. While thanking him for the money he's just given her, Buffy says haltingly that "I don't really know how to say this, but it's a little like having mom back". Giles is a bit taken aback by this ("In this scenario, I am your mother?") and Buffy asks him whether he "want[s] to be my shiftless absentee father".
And note that, despite Giles's counter-offer ("is there some sort of rakish uncle?"), this is exactly the role Giles almost immediately falls (back) into. Just a couple of episodes later he convinces himself Buffy would be better off without him -- which he came close to doing two years earlier, back in Season 4's The Freshman -- ignores her when she insists that isn't true, and flies off out of her life.
When I say that Giles is a kind of surrogate father figure to Buffy, what I mean is that -- at least in part -- a lot of the ways Giles is (unintentionally) cruel towards Buffy throughout the series come from the fact he sees her as something of a teenage child. As somebody who needs to grow up, fast, and who needs his help to do that whether she likes it or not. As an adult, yes, but not as an equal.
When I say that Giles is a kind of surrogate father figure to Buffy, what I mean is that he's specifically a kind of surrogate Hank Summers.
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