That's more of a problem with diff tools, though, which like almost all tooling and even programming languages, make the mistake of treating code as plain text.

OK, well, if you want to invent a new VC tool that can parse arbitrary languages into a syntax tree and make a useful diff and then convince everyone to use it instead of git then maybe I’ll stop using YAML.

Semantic Diff tools already exist. Haven't looked at ones that specifically support YAML, but e.g., graphtage claims to do so.