There are sites for non-branching the way CHYOA is for branching. Everything should be in its place.
Unfortunately, this idea is quite antithetical to CHYOA's purpose. I cannot imagine Friedman banning stories unless they threaten the site's existence.
As for why to publish there, same as to publish on paper or any site: Readership, fandom, and the results of that. But why to publish there as opposed to a site more-favorable &/or not clearly (& I think the site states so, or at least it once did) meant/set aside for another type that has less such sites...?
There is a limited number of appropriate sites with an equivalent or larger userbase than CHYOA. Many of these approve or reject stories on a strict case-by-case basis, which makes it quite challenging to write anything other than vanilla since the acceptability of your content depends on the whims of whoever happens to review it. Others are overly restrictive in other ways, such as users needing to create and verify an account before they can even view stories.
Others are quite well managed and designed, and fill a certain niche, much like CHYOA. However, they do so by disapproving of content outside of those niches, whereas CHYOA simply supports branching stories and markets them as its focus. For instance, it is almost pointless to publish an original story to AO3 (a fan-fic site) unless it fills one of those time-honoured fill-in-the-blanks tropes like Alpha/Beta/Omega settings. Wattpad's fanfic craze has settled down over the years, and they don't officially fill a niche, but its average user age seems to be around 11-15. That's not to say they won't read your erotica, but that they would likely become your main audience, which I'm not sure I could stomach. In general, publishing erotica to sites that aren't dedicated to adult content has its challenges anyway.
The only completely generic, non-tailored erotica site I know of that's larger than CHYOA is Literotica, and I, like many others, find it too difficult to work with. Whenever I am forced to look at that "literotica.com EROTIC STORIES" repeating wallpaper I can feel the cells of my eyeballs slowly be drained of their will to live. I have worked with Linux terminals with more effort directed into their graphic design; I have seen cave paintings with a less outdated appearance. The new beta story layout is bearable, I suppose, but still far messier than CHYOA, and with less of an apparent community presence, though I might be biased on the latter point. Also, Literotica actually has significantly
less support for multi-chapter linear stories - you have to publish chapters as individual stories and indicate the story title and chapter number in the chapter title, rather than adding new chapters to an existing story. As a consequence of this, you can't have any single chapter of less than 750 words, you can't have menus or note pages, and the system is swamped with every single chapter rather than just stories and reports.
The CHYOA system is not simply rare. It is
unique. It would be a great shame if
any type of (legal) story could not be published on it, even those types that I personally despise.
