It's not worse. Snapshots are exactly what you want if you would like to have format-aware diff/merge or to experiment with alternate algorithms.
But it's easier to complain about git and throw out pie-in-the-sky ideas about "modernizing our tools" than to try the actually-existing AST-based diff/merge tools and realize it's 100x more complex for no workflow gain.
Git is a content addressable snapshot system, with bolted on code to make it retrospectively appear to be a line-oriented system.
It's worse than you thought.