[samatman]

It's possible. I have no clue if fracking does so, and the link doesn't support this, but hear me out:

If you can choose between, say, five Richter 3 earthquakes, or one Richter 7, you definitely want the five small ones.

IF fracking induced small earthquakes and IF those small earthquakes relieved pressure such that a big one didn't happen, then those small earthquakes would be beneficial.

This is comparable to deliberately lighting small brushfires to use up fuel and prevent destructive wildfires.

It would be a remarkable coincidence if fracking only caused such beneficent and salubrious earthquakes, and never triggered worse ones. But were it so, it would be good.

[kstrauser]

The Richter scale is log(10), so a 7 quake is 10,000 times stronger than a 3. A lot of Bay Area residents had thought the same you mentioned over the years (it's not a crazy idea! I mean, it seems at least plausible on paper!) but that's generally accepted as untrue now; see https://www.sfgate.com/earthquakes/article/do-minor-quakes-p... for example.