"So with all of the above said, I seriously have no clue what Mark Zuckerberg is getting at here. Does he just want to crack down on hate speech? "

-- Probably. they're already doing this and the issue with this of course, we know that there is no actual definition of "hate speech" it's just an arbirtrary call to determine what is hate speech.

"Is he simply wanting to provide advertisers with more influence on what they monetize? In all honestly, its his platform, we do have better alternate options right now anyway.

Steemit, Minds and Gab are currently in growing trends right now."
-- Yes, philosophically they're better. But there's a long road ahead for mass and mainstream adoption. Without this, it's irrelevant what kind of "great work" these alternative sites do. I wish we could accelerate the process but it's a tough battle and definitely a long one.