Anyone who points to Pike and Hall as primary sources for what "Masonry is all about" does not know Masonry at all. I've never really met a Mason who likes Pike, and probably even fewer who have read anything he wrote. The primary work most people criticize from him, Morals and Dogma, was written for Scottish Rite. Since most Masons never progress beyond the basic three Blue Degrees, a Scottish Rite publication cannot even be used as a wedge to tell them they shouldn't join Masonry, since it doesn't apply to them anyway.
As for Hall, his primary works on Masonry were written in the 1920's, and he did not become a Mason until 1954, and was not 33rd degree until 1973. So anything he had to say about Masonry in his primary works about it, were done as an outsider, and decades before he ever saw the inside of a lodge. That's hardly a basis for considering him to be any kind of authority on the subject.
Add to that the fact that both men entertained opinions that were proven spurious before they ever published. Pike had been involved in compiling the material for his magnum opus for years when Robert Gould published his history that forever debunked the myth of Freemasonry's imagined antiquity. Not willing to see all his work go down the drain, he published it, but with a disclaimer in the foreword acknowledging that the reader was free to accept or dismiss any of it he chose. For Hall, it was no difficulty at all, apparently he had little regard for the history of the fraternity at all, and simply chose to include Masonry in his broad-based net of "secret teachings of all ages." Did you know that Hall actually traces Freemasonry all the way back to the mythical island of Atlantis? He's hardly to be taken seriously by any stretch of the imagination.